The Doctors and the Nurses They Adore Me So
by Lauralot
Summary: You can lead a clown to Arkham, but can you keep him in?
1. I Can't Control Myself

AN: This story occurs a few weeks after the events of TDK; just long enough for the Joker's attorney to plead insanity and have him sent to Arkham for evaluation. As mentioned in the ending author's notes of my last story, **it does not follow the continuity of my other fan fiction series**.

This fic is about the Joker's first experiences in Arkham, which is not a happy place, hence the M rating. If you are offended by language, violence, depictions of physical/sexual/emotional abuse, or otherwise disturbing imagery, this won't be your cup of tea.

Reviews are always appreciated, and thanks to all readers.

* * *

"I can't control myself because I don't know how,

And they love me for it, honestly, I'll be here for a while."

—"Blood," My Chemical Romance

There was blood on his face and it wasn't his own.

The Joker licked his lips; the flavor still strongly metallic despite the blood drying hours ago. Gotham's finest had likely violated some health regulation by leaving it there—silly little rules taking all the _excitement_ out of life—but then, considering that getting too close to him had caused this particular incident, it only made perfectly boring sense not to risk it again. As for himself, he was far more bothered by the lack of his characteristic greasepaint than any chance of developing AIDS.

Though that might be for the best, considering that the lacerations on face from his last encounter with the Bat had become infected. The pain didn't bother him, but he could have done without the smell, and he doubted the makeup would have done much in the way of disease prevention.

Ahead of him, the administrator—Jeremiah Arkham, he'd called himself—was doing a spectacular job of displaying all mannerisms of a shouting fit without raising his voice. "He should have been here _hours_ ago."

"We've been cleaning up this mess for hours; the incident reports took more than—"

"Everyone who was expecting to deal with him is already gone—"

A smirk spread across the Joker's features as he walked—easier said than done, tight as the ankle fetters were—zoning out the bickering. The first time he'd even stepped foot inside this place, and the administrator was seconds from an aneurysm. True, that was most anyone's reaction to his presence, but the laughs at County had been few and far between, and the Joker was willing to take what he could get right now. There was plenty of time to introduce his own brand of comedy—at least ninety days, and longer if they found him a few French fries short of a Happy Meal—and he figured the delivery would be best if he didn't start while septic.

Jumping Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, were they _still _going at it?

"—don't appreciate how much we've had to deal with ever since Loeb's funeral—"

"And you don't realize how things have been _here _since word got out that Crane had—"

_Aren't _I _supposed to be the center of attention here?_ He'd barely been offered a "welcome to Arkham" before they'd turned their focus to bitching at each other. Whatever. They were too busy playing "More Persecuted than Thou," and he wasn't about to waste quality comedic material on the behemoth orderlies to his sides and back. They looked about as thick as the walls.

And speaking of the walls, apparently Arkham's funding was not going to its design budget. Why was it that every hospital in the world went with painted cinderblocks? It was never an interesting color, either, always light and faded as if they'd diluted the paint to avoid buying more. Arkham had chosen the old standby of off-white, dirtied by age and God knows what else, which trumped piss-yellow—though that would go nicely with the odor—but suggested a bleak mindset with its presence alone. At least cabbage green or faded salmon offered _some_ variety.

"If he was careless enough," Arkham continued, rounding the corner, "to lose his fingers, then that shouldn't be made into our problem—"

"Finger," the Joker corrected, following them through the doorway to the infirmary, judging by the number of beds. "It was only one finger. And he didn't _lose _it; they handed it right back after I, uh, spat it out."

There was a moment in which everyone turned that cabbage-y color he'd been thinking of. _And they say honesty's the best policy._ Really, if the good doctor insisted on whining like a three year old with a dropped ice cream cone, he ought to get the facts straight.

Nobody said anything, averting their eyes as they recovered from the brink of vomiting, or pants-wetting, or any of the other fun things the human body did when scared shitless—there was another—until a nurse with an unfortunate dye job stepped out from behind her desk, clutching her clipboard against her chest as if that would defend her from senseless violence or kinky clown molestations. Dr. Arkham took that moment to mutter "I'll let you get started, then," as he all but fled the room, the cop on his heels the minute the cuffs and leg irons were back in his hands, without a glance back. _That's taking pride in a job, right there._ Between this and the finger-biting incident, the Joker was beginning to lose his faith in Gotham's boys in blue.

True, they'd never demonstrated competence during his reign of chaos either, but he'd been willing to give that the benefit of the doubt. Running off like a scared little girl, though, _that_ was unforgivable. He hadn't even bothered to say goodbye, unless he'd spoken at a pitch only audible to dogs. And as the Joker hadn't seen him taking shots off a helium tank any time in the past few minutes, that was unlikely. _So that's the thanks I get for making their jobs exciting. _People could be so ungrateful.

The remaining orderlies had hold of his hands, swapping the cuffs for a wrist belt as the nurse watched, silent. It allowed for movement of his elbows and shoulders, and left his legs entirely free. He considered kicking out of principle—it would be irrational of them to get angry at constructive criticism—but opted against it, letting them stew in their own discomfort until someone was forced to speak. The Joker instead took the time to survey his surroundings. The walls here, to his displeasure, _were_ that charming shade of piss. Two exam tables, both with curtains to pull around, and one for women's health, judging by the stirrups. The walls were lined with cabinets, some with biohazard warnings and some without, all with locks. There were around fifteen beds, or maybe closer to twenty, in two rows, one along the east wall and one down the center. Two of the beds were occupied.

His fellow patients were sleeping. Either drugged, or he'd delayed the transfer far longer than he'd thought. The one at the far end of the centered row, by the nurse's desk, was a woman, brunette and sick with something, judging by her labored breathing and the blankets pulled up to her chin. The other lay facing away from him in the middle bed along the wall. The Joker's guess was another girl, given the slender frame, but with the short hair—like a pixie cut done with safety scissors and grown out a bit—and the way the patient was facing the opposite wall, it could go either way.

"What happened to your face?"

The Joker turned to find the nurse staring at him, color draining from her face as their eyes met. He tried for a smile, though, going by her reaction, he might as well have bared his teeth. The blood across his chin probably wasn't helping matters. "You wanna know about the scars?"

"No, that's—I didn't—"

"See, I had a friend. My best friend." He found himself unable to gesture in the wrist belt, apart from shrugging. _That's not happy-making. _It was less effective than a straitjacket and far less stylish, so why did they use it? More comfortable, maybe, less interruption of blood flow, which made it all the more annoying. The discomfort would have been _fun_. "Blonde, like you, except her roots weren't as obvious. Now, she had a boyfriend. A jealous one, the type of psycho who'd, uh, whip out a switchblade to intimidate people whenever a conver_sa_tion wasn't going his way. One day, he gets drunk—"

"I meant the cuts." Spoken so quickly it might as well have been one word. She was hiding behind the clipboard again. "The ones above the—the scars."

His eye twitched. The Joker was lenient toward most _faux pas_—arson, murder, jaywalking—but interrupting one of _his _stories was just rude_, _with the sole exception of the time Batman did it. Still, there was no sense in getting off on the wrong foot, so he resolved to let it slide, for the time being. "Oh. Those. I, uh, took the grime off the floor of the jail cell and rubbed it in."

She looked dumbstruck as a pistol-whipped cow.

"They're mine." As great a part of him as the smile etched in his face, and no one was going to take that away, even if they were inflamed and oozing pus. The last person who'd tried to clean them had lost a finger, after all.

Blondie, as he'd decided to call her as long as her nametag was obscured by the board, stared a bit more before scribbling something down. "He has to sleep here tonight."

"Why?"

Oh, so the orderlies _did_ have the capacity for speech.

"He needs penicillin." She paused, pointing at his cheek with her pen; resumed writing. "Dr. Brandt has to prescribe it, and I can't release him until it's treated. Health risk. Here, bring him over."

Blondie was calmer in her element, he noted, as the orderlies grabbed his arms and half-dragged him toward the nearest exam table. "Are we playing doctor? 'Cause I'd be more than happy to dro_p_ my pants."

Color—fluorescent pink, to be specific—came to her face for the first time as she moved toward the sink, while the orderlies lifted him onto the exam table that wasn't made for vaginal viewing.

"I can wal_k_, ya know."

Blondie—who would henceforth be referred to as Linda, now that he could read her nametag—walked to the table, a damp washcloth in hand. "Those need to be cleaned."

_Hell no. _True, it was seeping, contaminated flesh, but it was _his _seeping, contaminated flesh. From _his _Bat. "It's a fashion statement."

"If you don't clean it out now, it will—"

"I _like _scars." He was all too aware of the orderlies flanking him, and his current, restraint-induced disadvantage. Still, he could kick, and that might be enough. It would have to be enough.

Linda had the audacity to sigh, as though _he_ was being unreasonable. "It's _going _to scar."

The Joker, halfway through surreptitiously lifting a leg to give her a good kick in the ovaries, stilled, tongue darting across his lips. "Come again?"

"Look how far the infection's progressed." With the hand not holding the Washcloth of Destruction, she pointed at his cheekbone, directly under the eye, stopping right before she touched his skin. "Scarring is a given, at this point. But if it goes any farther, it could affect your vision, or become too widespread for us to stop."

He considered it. If she was lying, he could still wait for the infection to go, and aggravate the wounds again. And they'd be bandaged, concealed, so he might get away with it. A risk, but even he had to admit that blindness—or his face coming off, _a la _Harvey Dent—wasn't his idea of a good time, no matter how much fun it would be to frighten children with his exposed skull. He licked his lips again, nodded. "If you must."

Linda pressed the washcloth to his face, the water warm and, judging by its faint sting, mixed with salt. She had an orderly hold it in place, retrieving her clipboard. It occurred to the Joker that he'd yet to learn the orderlies' names either; deciding on Bobo, Snowflake, and Gargantua as she returned.

"Can you give me a name? For your file?"

"Abraham de Lacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley."

Her pen, which had been poised at the ready, bobbed down to the clipboard only to come straight back up, like a sewing needle.

He smirked, the washcloth brushing his lips. They still hadn't wiped the blood off. "It's Joker."

She wrote something, though he had no idea if it was "Joker" or "uncooperative" or "Christopher Rupert Windemere Vandermere Karl Alexander François Reginald Lancelot Herman Gregory James." He liked to think it was "Christopher Rupert Windemere Vandermere Karl Alexander François Reginald Lancelot Herman Gregory James."

"Your date of birth?"

"August thirty-first, twelve."

Again, Linda started to write only to stop at once. "Twelve?"

"AD."

A sigh. "Is there a history of any particular illness in your family?"

The Joker sucked on his scars from the inside of his mouth, giving it a moment's consideration. "Er…leprosy. And ,uh, sudden infant death syndrome, both of my parents had that. And eczema."

This time, she didn't bother to write. So much for trust.

"Have you had any surgeries?"

"Hemicorporectomy, a few years back."

"Are your vaccinations up to date?"

He smacked his lips. "Dunno. Do ya need Gardasil ever again after the third shot?"

Was it his imagination, or was a vein in her forehead pulsing? "Any allergies we should know about?" Linda's posture tightened, as though bracing herself. She hadn't written a thing down past the first question, to his knowledge.

"To food, or what?"

She met his eyes for the first time since the questioning started, doing a poor job of hiding surprise. "To anything."

"Ah. In that case, hydroxyethyl cellulose."

Linda did that stopping and starting thing again, giving him a confused glance.

"It's a, uh, thickener, like in makeup? Or K-Y Jelly. Or a lo_t _of lubricants, actually." His tongue hit the washcloth as he licked his lips, and he wrinkled his nose before continuing. "That's how I found out, see. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find lube that doesn't—"

"Are you able to use a toilet without assistance?" Again, spoken as if it was all one word.

The Joker's mouth twitched. "Is this a medical exam or a fetish survey?"

"I'm going to assume that's a yes." She moved the pen with such force that he expected to hear paper tearing.

"You know what they say about _ass_umptions—"

"Can you eat independently?"

"This _is _a fetish survey."

"Any difficultly chewing, or other dietary needs?"

He fell silent, now biting at the inward portion of the scars. The washcloth shifted against his skin with the movements of his cheeks, itching horribly.

She cleared her throat. "Is that—"

"No."

It wasn't clear if she'd had more questions, and his tone had frightened her out of asking, or if that was the end of the list. Either way, her next act was to shove a thermometer in his mouth—roughly, and if it had been glass instead of plastic, he'd have been tempted to bite down out of spite—and proceed with the majority of the examination while he was unable to speak. He was docile for the most part—to his amusement, the simple act of _touching _him had her visibly frightened, especially when she finally wiped the blood off—though he couldn't help but jerk when she touched the stethoscope to his skin. Did those things not work if they weren't freezing, or did medical professionals keep them that way for the fun of it?

Linda didn't share his temperature with him when the thermometer beeped, though she took a long time in writing it down. Given the infection, the Joker was fairly certain it was a low grade fever, and also fairly certain as to what the reason was in her delay. The medical exams for psychiatric institutions, if they were anything like the ones for prisons, had to be thorough, not just for the sake of the prisoner, but for the wellbeing of everyone they'd come into contact with. She'd been awkward enough taking his _pulse_.

"Help him down."

The Joker found himself standing, the washcloth still pressed against his face. It was cool now, though whether that was pus or just time at work, he couldn't be sure. He _could_ be sure that Linda had examined his upper body when she'd raised his shirt for the stethoscope, but not—

"I'm going to need to remove your pants."

"That would be my _pleasure_." A pause. "And your privilege."

* * *

AN: Most fan fiction I read with the Joker in Arkham goes one of two ways: He's dragged in kicking and screaming, leaving a trail of blood in his struggles and shouting "You'll never take me alive!", or he finds the place to be a great vacation home when he needs a break from villainy. I love both story types, by the way, so don't take that as an insult. However, I thought it'd be interesting to see the Joker as ambivalent toward the institution the first time around, forming his opinion as he goes, and thus this fic was born.

The story and chapter titles come from the song in the quote, "Blood" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=9CB4obgXtw4), which is actually the only My Chemical Romance song I've ever heard. I hesitated to put it as the opening quote, since, at least among my circle of friends, it's a polarizing band, and I didn't want to put off potential readers who weren't fans of the band. I ended up keeping it for two reasons: First, that I liked the whole quote better than the snippet that fit for a title, and second, because I've decided to give this fic a theme of quoting particular songs/poems/etc. that provide the inspiration for chapters. And also simply because I like the song. It reminds me of _A Clockwork Orange _for reasons I can't explain.

By the way, alternate titles for this fic as suggested by readers trying to decipher TDATNTAMS include "Tap Dancing Around Town Naked To Alfred's Magical Saxophone," from Lily Mae Ray, "The Dreadful Action 'Twas Never Told And Mentioned Since," by the anonymous "TDATNTAMS," and "Today Dent and Tetch Navigate Through Angry Mobs Silently," by AZ-Woodbomb.

The cuts on the Joker's face are the ones Batman gave him with the armor spikes at the end of TDK, if that wasn't clear.

Yes, I was referencing _that _Abraham de Lacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=lFZc3gyBEOA Much like I was referencing _that_ His Royal Highness Christopher Rupert Windemere Vandermere Karl Alexander François Reginald Lancelot Herman Gregory James: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=teN77F3sAik The idea of the Joker watching musicals (and singing along to them) amuses me entirely too much.

August 31st, 12 AD is the birth date of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also known as Caligula. I can never decide if it amuses or disturbs me that I share my birthday with him. A hemicorporectomy is a last resort medical procedure that amputates the entire lower half of the body, and Gardasil is a vaccination for women against some strains of HPV. Bobo, Snowflake, and Gargantua are all names of famous gorillas.

Again, reviews are always appreciated, and I promise this is the last time the author's note will be so massive.


	2. Nowhere to Go

AN: Check it out, everyone! I have a _Shadow Selves _fanart from Nox Wicked, and it is great: tsukino-hikari. deviantart. com/ art/ Darling-Won-t-You-Be-Still-149757702

I discovered today that googling TDATNTAMS will only bring up one link: the last chapter of _Shadow Selves_, where I first mentioned it. Granted, of course an acronym that long and weird wouldn't bring up anything else, but I still feel strangely accomplished for being the only link on the search. I'm odd.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Nothing to do and nowhere to go,

I wanna be sedated."

—"I Wanna Be Sedated," The Ramones

"You're supposed to be sleeping."

Linda appeared in his line of sight, blocking his view of the crumbling, water-stained ceiling tiles. _Oh. What a pity. _She was decidedly less fun now that she'd stopped staring at him the way a mouse on crutches might look at a particularly large, agile cat. If mice could use crutches. Or even get a hold of them; the Joker doubted there was a large demand for that sort of product. A clever mouse, he supposed, might be able to fashion crutches out of, say, toothpicks, but if it was intelligent enough to do that, it would probably have the sense just to splint its leg and refrain from movement unless it was absolutely necessary—

"Joker."

Oh, right. She was still there. "Isn't it, I dunno, counterproductive to start a conversation when you want me to sleep?"

"Our patients are held to a nightly sleep schedule. Meaning that you'll have to be active tomorrow whether you're tired or not."

Look who was so high and mighty once the big scary clown was strapped to the bed. It seemed more than a bit overzealous; restraining him before he'd had the chance to earn it. True, he did have a history of so-called "destructive behaviors," but he failed to see how society's perpetual stick up the ass ought to affect his freedoms here.

"I don't sleep." _Couldn't _sleep, not like this. It wasn't that he was tied up—he could envision more than a few scenarios in which he would enjoy that—so much as the fact that he was tied up with nothing to _do_. Jokers were not static beings. They needed to be talking, laughing, walking, maiming, stabbing, _something. _This was Chinese water torture with his own thoughts standing in place of the dripping, making it impossible to ignore the light pressure on his wrists and ankles. It wasn't even painful, which could have made things fun.

"Would you like something to help you fall a—"

"I'm evoking my right to refuse medication." One might say it was hypocritical to mock the law while reaping its benefits, to which the Joker might be inclined to introduce a hypodermic full of drain cleaner to said one's veins. If there was one thing he was sure of in regards to Arkham Asylum, it was that they weren't about to dilute his mind, chemically, electrically, or otherwise. And if they legally couldn't, well, that just put everyone on friendlier terms.

Linda—he was considering changing her name to Nurse Ratched, but then what would he do if someone worse came along?—brushed a strand of hair back from her face, and he noticed for the first time how lined she was around the eyes, for her age. Night shifts at the madhouse didn't seem to be doing her any favors. "It could help you feel comfortable."

"So would being, uh, not tied to the bed." He'd already given up blood and urine and had his naked body examined by a strange woman in the name of helping. And true, none of that had bothered him, but he felt he should deserve some sort of compensation on principle. He must have handled it better than the average whackaloon, and wasn't cooperation meant to be rewarded?

"It's for your protection."

"Really? 'Cause I think it's for yours." He drew out the last "s" ever so slightly, held in a smirk at the flash of fear on her face. People who played with fire needed to keep in mind that some fires couldn't be contained, even if they were willing to sit still for a moment.

"Just—" Linda moved as if to touch his shoulder, instead straightening his blanket. "Just try to get some rest." She walked back to the desk, leaving the Joker staring at the ceiling again, fingers tapping against the mattress.

He wondered if humming would earn him a reprimand, and how many more lectures he could provoke before he could be deemed out of conduct and be forcibly—legally—sedated. He wondered if he could be deemed a threat when he was strapped to a mattress. He wondered if sedation wouldn't be a welcome combat to this boredom, in spite of all his objections to it.

There was a sound of fabric shuffling to his side, toward the direction of Linda's desk. She'd placed him in the bed as far from her as possible—the fact that she still frightened when he was restrained did make him smile—in the same row as the Girl With the Unfortunate Haircut, as he'd dubbed her, or GWUH for short. He preferred GWUH. It was more fun to pronounce. He still wasn't entirely sure it _was _a girl, but men slightly outnumbered women in the world, and the Joker had, for the moment, decided to root for the underdog. She'd shifted in her bed, pulling the covers tighter around herself. He pondered whether or not she'd be an interesting conversationalist, and devoted his time to trying to will her awake with the Jedi Mind Trick.

A few hours later, he decided the Jedi Mind Trick didn't work on her, and gave up.

* * *

Even _asleep_, he set her hair on end.

It didn't matter that he was strapped down to the bed, or that there were two orderlies—both of them enormous—at the ready, should he somehow manage his way out of the restraints. It didn't matter that Linda had told Teresa, when she'd come in for the morning shift, that he'd been cooperative aside from a few smart remarks and perverted statements. Teresa couldn't _handle _a few smart remarks or perverted statements. The thought that the Joker—the _Joker_—might start leering at her when he woke up made her want to run home and take a shower until she'd wiped out the entire apartment complex's hot water supply. _This is _not _what I had in mind when I went into nursing._

She'd chosen psychiatric nursing knowing it would be difficult. She'd dealt with patients masturbating in front of her or smearing their own feces on the wall as a med student, for God's sake. There were times when she'd felt overwhelmed, or even unsafe, but this was different. Even for a mental patient, there was some standard of normalcy, and the Joker was so far from that point that he wasn't even a blip on the radar. Teresa didn't like to think that a human being could be pure evil, but if anyone came close…she'd never forget the night she spent glued to the television, watching the situation with the ferries unfold, thanking God that she lived off the island and terrified to tears for her friends that weren't so lucky.

And now the monster responsible for it was here. Teresa didn't know if he was insane or not. She didn't know if he was human enough to qualify. All she knew was that she was on the verge of a panic attack just sitting here, and that every passing second was pushing her further.

_Breathe. _Breathe. _He's only here until the doctor looks at him, and then you'll never have to see him again. Relax. _Easier said than done, when she arrived two hours before the attending physician. When the Joker could wake up at any second.

This was her own fault, for choosing to work at Arkham Asylum. All her friends had warned her against it—it's haunted, it's cursed, its own founder went insane and got locked up there—but she'd brushed them aside as irrational fears. The massive breakout had given her pause, sure, but they'd recovered their patients and upped the security. Teresa had expected it to be safe.

She hadn't expected to be in the same room with the madman who'd put all her friends from Gotham General out of a job.

He looked disturbingly _ordinary _in sleep, apart from the angry red scars slashed around his lips and the bandaging over the cuts. Not especially tall or short, thin, with streaks of green in his dirty-blond hair and faint stubble over his face. She'd never thought about the Joker having stubble before. She didn't like it. It made him too like other people, and it turned her stomach.

"You're not Linda."

_Holy Mother of God._ She bit her lip to stifle a gasp. His eyes were open. When had that happened? He hadn't moved; hadn't given any indication that he was regaining consciousness. _Has he been awake the whole_—no. No. If she thought about that she was going to scream, and she couldn't scream in front of him. He'd feed off it, somehow, like those awful shows on the Discovery Channel when they showed sharks going wild at the scent of blood.

_Don't panic. He can't get you. _"No." She prayed that her voice hadn't shaken. "Her shift is over."

He licked his lips. Her heart was hammering so hard she could hardly tell where one beat started and the other stopped. "And you are?"

"T—" _What am I doing? _She couldn't give the _Joker _her name. The thought of him saying it made her skin crawl. He'd pervert it. Teresa found herself all too aware of her nametag, hoping that he couldn't see if from the angle where she was standing. Of all the things to worry about it a room with a murderous lunatic who liked to wear nightmarish runny makeup, she knew her name was the last thing that ought to concern her, but she couldn't help it.

Someone coughed, and she whirled around, thankfully for the distraction. The brunette girl in the other row of beds; what was her name? Teresa's mind had gone blank, but it wasn't important; if she was awake, she could need a bedpan, or a toothbrush, or any other number of things that wouldn't involve dealing with the—

The brunette rolled over in the bed, eyes shut. _Hell._

"Ma'am?"

Him again. The voice was unmistakable. She'd never pictured the Joker saying "ma'am." Then again, until earlier this week when the man's sentencing was all over the news and she had a panic attack at the thought of being in the same building as him, she'd never pictured him saying anything at all. Teresa tried forcing herself to relax, failed, and settled for forcing herself not to shake as she turned around. "Did you need a bedpan?" God, she didn't know if she could force herself to hold a bedpan for him.

"No, just—" His tongue came out again, rubbing over his bottom lip. There was a smaller scar there, one she'd never noticed when he was on the news, because that awful makeup had concealed it. Watching him _caressing _it with his tongue like that, it was all she could do not to be sick. "Is there any way I could, uh, shave?"

_He shaves? _What a stupid thought; he _had _to shave. It wasn't like a thin, filthy layer of face paint would conceal a beard. Still, the thought of him with a razor…_Relax. God. _He'd been awake for at least a few minutes, and he hadn't made any threats, or come–ons, or tried to escape. It was a normal request, weird as that was. _I'm making too big a deal out of this._

"No. But if you don't mind a depilatory?"

The Joker nodded.

She instructed Michael, the closest orderly, to un-strap him, doing all that she could not to shiver as she walked to the cabinet. In a room with an unbound Joker. There weren't enough guards in the world to make that feel safe. She couldn't work like this, knowing he was in the building. _Hell, I'm going to need sedatives just to get through this shift._

Teresa took longer than she needed, getting the depilatory and the accompanying cup of water. If the orderlies—or the maniac—noticed, they didn't say anything. "Here you go."

The Joker took the cup from her—their fingers didn't brush, and thank God, because she would have dropped it for certain if they had—wrinkling his nose at the white cream inside.

"Don't get it in your eyes."

A nod, and he dipped his fingers in, carefully spreading along his jawbone. He was so _calm _about it. He'd never been calm in those news videos, not that she'd seen. Maybe he'd be different if not for the orderlies on either side, making sure he stayed seated, making sure his hands only went toward his face. But maybe not. Would someone that crazy care if he got hit? If not for those horrible scars, she wouldn't have believed this was the Joker.

Another noise. A murmur, this time, like someone coming out of sleeping, and too deep to be a woman's. Teresa turned to Jonathan Crane's bed, watched him rub his eyes with the back of his hand. She'd better get the morphine, then. He was going to need—

"Hey!"

It felt as if someone had doused her in ice water. It was all she could do not to freeze, forcing herself to turn when she heard the orderly yell. Time seemed to move in slow motion, terrible thoughts racing through her head, imagining all the Joker could be doing. Someone like that could tear out a person's throat using his _teeth._ And then she was facing him, trying to comprehend exactly what she was watching.

His teeth were involved, or his mouth, at least. His fingers were in it, lips closed tightly around them, as Michael tried to pull his hand back while the other orderly—her mind had gone blank on names again-had hold of his shoulders. She stared, confused, until her eyes moved from his hand to the cream on his face and—_oh._

Good God, he was trying to _eat_ Nair. She'd known he was insane, but she'd never have expected _that._

Teresa acted on impulse, grabbing him by the wrist as Michael managed to pry the other hand from his mouth, dragging him forward. She didn't know if it was the force of her adrenaline or the Joker's willingness to move, but she managed to pull him to the sink, shoving the cup of water to his mouth. His lips opened easily enough, against her expectations, and he swished the water around without being told. Suddenly horrified by the thought that he'd swallow and burn through his esophagus, she pushed down on his shoulders until he was leaning over the sink. "Spit it out!"

He did, cloudy water tinged with pink circling the drain. She shoved a towel against his face, wiping away what remained of the depilatory before he could try it again, then grabbed him by the jaw, pushing on either side of his mouth so he would open it. Again, she wasn't sure if it was her force or his willingness. "Let me see your tongue."

The hair remover had eaten into it, but only just. The water seemed to have removed all traces of the cream. He couldn't have swallowed it, because if he had, he'd either be convulsing in agony or hacking up much more blood. "Why would you do that?"

He shrugged, as the adrenaline faded and Teresa remembered just who she was holding onto. _I scolded the Joker._ Shaking, she took her hand from his face, feeling as if she'd been submerged in ice all over again. _What was I thinking? _He'd seemed so, well, not ordinary in that moment, but just like anyone else with a mental illness. She was used to patients eating things that weren't intended for consumption. It's just that most of those patients weren't criminally insane clowns.

But the sense of normalcy was long gone. She hadn't just scolded him. She'd _manhandled _him, pulling, pushing, grabbing him by the _face._ There was no way he'd let that slide. Orderlies or not, she was going to get hurt, no question.

"I wanted to see how it would feel."

Teresa flinched instinctively, bracing herself for a blow that never came. She only realized that she hadn't been hit after she processed the words. The Joker just stood, pushing his tongue around the inside of his mouth, without so much as looking at her. "Well. Now you know, don't you?"

He nodded slightly, eyes tracking from one side to another as his tongue moved. "That was different."

"Come on."

She let the orderlies lead him back to the bed, still trying to make head or tails of what she'd witnessed. He went without complaint, silent, still exploring the damage he'd done to his tongue. It wasn't until he was lying back down on the bed, in the process of being strapped down a second time, that he spoke. "Oh. So you're a guy, then."

_What? _She followed his line of sight to Jonathan Crane, completely forgotten in the last few minutes' mess. He'd managed to pull himself to a sitting position, eyes glazed from the morphine but focused nonetheless. Focused on the Joker.

_Hell. _True, Jonathan had been about as harmful as a newborn puppy since they'd brought him in, silent and withdrawn and a danger to nobody, but if there were two people in the hospital who didn't need to be talking, it would be the city's two "super criminals."

Teresa nearly ran for the morphine.

"What's up, doc?" Oh God. The Joker had recognized him. And Jonathan, despite being doped and miserable, had chosen to focus all his attention on the clown. That was hardly a good sign.

"Trying to figure out if that's obfuscating," Jonathan said, the words slow and slurred, and nonsensical as far as she was concerned.

But not as far as the Joker was concerned, apparently, because he laughed. _That can't be good._ "And you're in for?"

"Stitches." Teresa moved to Jonathan's bed, rolling back his sleeve as his eyes widened. He was still staring at the Joker, but differently now, as if seeing him for the first time. She stuck the needle in, pushed the plunger. "Oh. You're him."

"The one and only."

Jonathan shook his head, smiling faintly. Teresa realized that she'd never seen him smile before. "They're going to _love _you here."

"I certainly hope so."

* * *

AN: "I Wanna Be Sedated" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=k_yaoOLsxus) is a song by The Ramones, written after they were stuck in a London hotel all day after a Christmas concert. Incidentally (and completely unrelated to its use in this chapter) it's a lot like how having OCD feels.

Mental patients (even involuntarily committed ones) do have the legal right to refuse medication, unless the hospital takes them to court and wins, or if they're underage and a parent consents.

And yes, we'll hear more on Jonathan and his injuries later.


	3. Just Another Case

AN: Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I'm stuck here on the inside looking out, I'm just another case,

Where's my makeup, where's my face on the inside?"

—Alice Cooper, "From the Inside"

The infirmary walls were soundproof.

_Taking all the fun out of life, aren't they?_ That was the one thing everybody expected about asylums: the noise. Shrieking at nonexistent voices, muttering to imaginary friends. Sobbing, whether the misery was induced by hallucinated tormentors, or simply the bleakness of the situation. Comedy gold. It didn't matter _what _the sound was; everybody knew that asylums were noisy, and here he was, cut off from the action. What was the point, exactly, of going among mad people if he didn't get to have fun with the crazies?

_Maybe I'm being punished._

The Joker found himself scraping at his palms with his nails, tapping one foot against the mattress as he glanced around the room. He'd counted the ceiling tiles. He'd counted the cinderblocks on the walls. He'd nearly made the Twitchy-Not-Linda nurse—Teresa, as he'd read off her name tag during the Nair affair, but that was boring—faint on three separate occasions, and he hadn't had anything approaching a simulating conversation since Jonathan Crane had passed out from the loopy juice. Anyone trying to analyze people while doped was an interesting conversationalist in the Joker's book.

He wondered whether Twitchy-Not-Linda nurse would be less of a stick in the mud if she was doped. Not that he'd have an opportunity to test it while the straitjacket was on. Maneuvering his fingers was tedious enough without struggling out of the thing. Not to say that he couldn't do it, but there was a time and a place.

Breakfast had been acceptable, at least. Of course, his definition of acceptable food was anything that didn't kill him or make him vomit up his intestinal tract, but it was better than starvation. Probably. And to the kitchen's credit, while the eggs may have looked as though they'd been scorched in the sulfur pits of hell, and had the texture of stale calamari—if that was even possible—but they managed to taste only kind of gross. And the fact that they wouldn't let him use a fork had provided a good laugh, which had nearly given Twitchy-Not-Linda nurse a heart attack. So there was that.

But that was the extent of the limited humor. Not long after, Dr. I-Can't-Grow-Facial-Hair-But-I-Refuse-to-Stop-Trying showed up, spent all of five seconds examining the Joker's face, and scribbled down a prescription that the nurse quite literally ran out of the room to fill. He'd been unceremoniously strapped into the straitjacket—definitely more stylish than the wrist belt—shortly thereafter, presumably because his time in the infirmary was at an end.

Only he'd been here for a good five minutes now, with no signs of upcoming eviction.

He might have to write a strongly-worded letter of complaint about this.

Jonathan Crane was still adrift in Morphine-Land, and the patient with the breathing problem—he was considering Darth Vader as a nickname for her—had yet to wake up. If that concerned any of the medical staff, they had an odd way of showing it. So his fellow patients were as useful as a chocolate teapot, and the doctor and orderlies seemed to be playing the "Let's See Who Can Be Quiet the Longest Game." It was up to him to provide a topic of conversation, then.

"Whan that aprill with his shoures soote." The Joker paused, in case anyone wanted to jump in.

Everyone did a marvelous job of looking in a different direction, or, in the crazies' cases, sleeping. Either they were all jerks, or literary education was dead. He held in a sigh, resigned to pass the time speaking—reciting—to himself.

"The droghte of mar—"

"Sorry I'm late."

It was a woman's voice, the Joker noted, but it wasn't shaky, so it couldn't be Teresa's. Besides, it was deeper. He turned, took her in. White, brunette, with her hair stopping just short of her shoulders. Given the professional dress and lack of scrubs, the Joker decided she was a doctor. And considering her lack of doctor-doctor supplies—stethoscope, lab coat, otoscope—a shrink. _His _shrink, judging from the way he was being shuffled off the bed.

A hello might have been nice. Maybe they assumed he needed no introduction.

"Goodbye, unconscious people." He tried for a wave and just managed to rustle the canvas cloth. _Wonder if the primates would take offense at "goodbye, apes."_

"I'm Ruth Adams," she said, once he'd been forced across the room. So she _would _speak directly to him; she just took her time about it. "I'll be your psychotherapist."

They were moving down the hall now. Somebody _really _needed to tell these people that he could walk on his own. He'd say something, but he had the distinct feeling that the guards developed selective deafness every time he opened his mouth. "So we're on a first name basis, Ruthie?"

The Joker couldn't discern if the nickname had bothered her; there was no change to her gait or expression that he could see, and he only had a view of her profile, half-blocked by an orderly. He was naming that one Gojira. "If you want to be."

She gave off the scent of cigarette smoke, though there wasn't pack visible on her person from his line of sight, and her fingers weren't stained with nicotine. That explained the delay. He wondered if their first session would quicken her need for another break. He had that effect on people.

The Joker turned his focus away from her and to the hall itself. That grimy off-white again, peeling a bit here and there. _Christ. _Between the paint job and the dim lighting, just looking at this place could induce depression. It'd be sad if he didn't enjoy laughing at the misfortune of others.

Not that there were any others to laugh at. Apart from Ruth Adams and the illegitimate offspring of King Kong flanking him, the place looked as if Jeremiah Arkham had wised up to the hospital's futility and put the building up for rent. Not a person in sight, not a sound to be heard. Just the doors and the bare walls. And perhaps a crumb that was even too small for a mouse, but he wasn't going to waste his time looking for it. "Any loonies in the bin, doc?"

"They're in their rooms."

"That because of me?"

She didn't answer. So that was a yes. His sentence here, served in total isolation. That didn't sound like good-timing. "Can I just state, for the record, that I find this straitjacket—while fully fashionable and more than a little kinky—entirely unnecessary?"

"It's a security measure," she said, taking a card from her pocket and swiping open one of the doors. There was a white noise machine by it, so an office. "If you aren't a risk to yourself or others, you won't have to wear it."

"So, isn't this, uh, preemptive?"

Ruth stepped inside, flipped on the light, again ignoring the question. The Joker followed, surveying the small office as she moved behind the desk. "Take a seat. Let's get started."

* * *

"Do I get to look at ink blots?"

"No. Not today." Ruth opened the file on her desk, rifling through the papers from the initial court hearing. On the other side of the desk, the Joker sat, glancing at the walls. If he'd noticed that the orderlies were waiting outside the office, it hadn't visibly affected his demeanor. "I'll just be going over why you're here and asking some preliminary questions." She took the court order for evaluation, placed it in front of him. "You know where you are, don't you?"

He didn't answer, examining either her license framed on the wall or the calendar beside it.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Is that Neuschwanstein?" He shifted, trying to move inside the straitjacket, and settled for tilting his head toward the calendar.

"Yes."

"Ever been there?" She couldn't tell if he was incapable of making eye contact, or only distracted. Either way, she jotted it down on the evaluation form.

"No. Where are you at, right now?"

The Joker turned to face her. So eye contact wasn't a problem. He ran his tongue over his lips, exposing yellowed teeth—she marked that under "appearance"—smacking his lips before he spoke. "Your office?"

"Which is where?" she persisted, before he could find something else to captivate his attention.

"Arkham Asylum. Formally the, uh, Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. When'dya start letting in the normal basket cases?"

The hospital's former name wasn't common knowledge, even among most lifelong Gotham residents. Dr. Arkham didn't enjoy the reminder of the asylum's start, of the founder—and ancestor—who'd ended life a patient in his own sanitarium. Ruth couldn't say that she blamed him. Another note. "Right. The judge sentenced you to a ninety day evaluation so that your mental health could be determined—"

"Oh, I know that." He never stopped moving, be it lip-licking, head-turning, or gently rocking in the seat. "I was _there_, ya know. And I gotta say that courtrooms are nowhere _near _as interesting as, like,_ Law and Order_ in real life. Everyone's all quiet and reserved, and coma-inducingly _boring._ I mean, I yelled "Objection!" once, just to keep myself awake, and they had no sense of humor about it at all—"

"So you understand that what we discuss in these sessions may be used by the judge in the future?"

He nodded, looking more interested in the filing cabinets than the discussion at hand. "I don't mind if you kiss and tell, doc."

Ruth ignored that, slipped the order back into the file and closed it, setting the patient evaluation on top. "I'm going to ask you a few questions about yourself."

"My favorite subjec_t_."

"Just answer as honestly as possible." She poised her pen over the form. "Have you ever received psychiatric treatment before?"

"No_pe. _You're popping my psychoanalysis cherry."

_There's a mental image I could have done without. _She decided against pointing out the difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The last thing they needed was to draw out this conversation. The medical exam had already covered allergies, medications, and surgeries, so she copied those responses down and moved on. "Do you take any drugs?"

"I get high on life." He'd stopped making eye contact again. The Joker moved like a dog, distracted by the faintest sound or flash of color. Whether it was intentional or involuntary was yet to be determined.

"Alcohol?"

"On occasion. But I've always got designated henchclowns driving."

So the Joker was concerned with drunk driving, provided she could take anything he said without an ocean's worth of salt. Who knew? "Do you smoke?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Are you coming onto me?"

That took her aback, despite her efforts to conceal it. "What?"

"Well, _you _smoke. So if you're inviting me to come with…" He tilted his head, clicked his tongue. "You're not bad looking, but I think that just might violate some sort ethical code, doc."

Because he wasn't a big enough piece of work as it was; he had to be crass on top of it. _Lucky me. _She couldn't tell which would be better: if he _was _faking, or if he honestly couldn't help it. "It's a question, not a proposition."

"Oh. Then no, smoke makes me gag." He was bouncing one leg up and down now, pushing on the insides of his cheeks with his tongue and making the scars all the more prominent.

"Are you uncomfortable?"

There was a pause. The Joker wasn't meeting her eyes anymore, gazing either at the space where the ceiling met the wall, or simply off into space. His leg was still moving, and he'd switched to chewing on his lips. Ruth was opening her mouth to ask again when he finally spoke. "I miss my lipstick."

"Patients aren't allowed makeup products."

He shrugged, now fixated on her paperweight.

"Is there a history of mental illness in your family?"

A nod, suddenly enthusiastic. "Everybody."

"Everybody?"

"Nobody."

"Have you ever contemplated suicide?"

The Joker's eyes went wide, the corners of his mouth turning down. "Is that a suggestion?"

"Of course not."

"You could stand to be a bit more de_lic_ate in your phrasing, Ruthie."

She was beginning to wish she'd told him nicknames were off limits. Though, given that he only had a nickname, that wouldn't have worked so well. "Do you often feel persecuted?"

"And now you're calling me paranoid."

It wasn't worth getting into. "Did you have a bed wetting problem past the age of seven?"

The Joker blinked, brows furrowing. "Is there a _reason _everyone in this place is obsessed with my bodily fluids?"

"Try to answer the questions with a yes or a no."

"Don't remember."

"What was your relationship with your parents like?"

"How is that a yes or no question?"

Ruth had to admit she'd walked into that one. "Did you get along with them?"

"Wouldn't know. They were too poor to support me, so while I was still an infant they, uh, dropped me off at orphanage. Didn't in_tend_ to abandon me, though, they meant to come back for me when they weren't down on their luck. So they left a note explaining their intentions, and half a locket, so they could prove I was theirs with the other half when they returned, but—"

"I take it you're a fan of Broadway musicals."

He grinned, managing to show almost every yellowed tooth. "Par_tic_ularly ones with plucky redheads."

"Were you abused as a child?"

Another shrug. "One kid's corporal punishment is another's ticket to foster care."

_I'll take that as a yes. _"Do you—"

"What shade is your lipstick?"

She looked up from the evaluation for to find the Joker staring at her. At her mouth, to be specific. "Excuse me?"

"Your lipstick. I mean, it's not _red _red, but it's better than the nurses'. They had pink and, uh, _nude_, which, besides being a stupid and contradictory name for a makeup product, is nowhere near as fun as—"

"I don't share my lipstick with patients." Especially not the ones who looked as though they hadn't seen a toothbrush since the nineties.

The Joker scowled. "Just seeing if we shopped in the same place."

"I doubt it. Do you find yourself unable to tolerate boredom?"

"Why do ya think I keep trying to change the subject?"

"So this session is making you uncomfortable?"

"This _building _is making me want to blow something up. Can the patients have access to explosives?"

"No."

A sigh. "Knew you'd say that."

* * *

AN: "From the Inside" is a song by Alice Cooper about a patient he met while inside a New York Sanitarium for alcoholism. Apologies for the poor quality of the video and the general WTF-ery of it; the choices on Youtube were limited: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=r9BSyzevTgY&feature=related

Dr. Ruth Adams is a character in the graphic novel _Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. _She was treating both the Joker and Harvey Dent, both without much success.

Gojira is the Japanese name for Godzilla. Neuschwanstein is a castle in the Bavarian Alps of Germany, and was the basis for Cinderella's castle.

"Whan that aprill with his shoures soote" (when April with his showers sweet) is the Middle English opening line of _The Canterbury Tales._

"Crumb that was even too small for a mouse" refers to _The Grinch, _and the musical he's referencing is _Annie._


	4. I Still Won't Think of You

AN: I was leaving my screenwriting class on Friday, one of my classmates stopped me to ask if I was the girl who'd dressed as Harley Quinn on Halloween. I don't know which I find more surprising: that BSU students outside of my dorm remember the costume, or that he recognized me in spite of the fact that I'd had a mask, makeup, and my hair concealed as Harley.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I haven't thought of you in fifteen days, and today I still won't think of you.

And when I call you up and you're not home, well, I might not even care."

—Jonathan Coulton, "Not About You"

The cell was twelve feet by fourteen, padded, white. Of all the colors in the spectrum, they'd chosen white. It didn't even qualify _as _a color, just the absence of. Well, all the colors, in terms of light, but this was no time for technicalities. It was enough of a struggle not to die of boredom without getting caught up in such tedious details. White. It wasn't just dull enough to qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, it was idiotic. Considering the type of patients held in padded rooms, it was a fair bet that said padding would be smeared with food or blood or feces, at some point. One would think they'd choose a color that wouldn't show human waste so well. But then, white was probably cheaper. And what did aesthetics matter when it came to saving a buck?

The Joker was forced to concede the possibility that he could grow to hate this place. _At least they took the straitjacket off._

They hadn't been gentle about removing it, either. If it could be worn for extended periods without the risk of hindering circulation and causing excruciating pain—he wouldn't mind some excruciating pain at the moment—the Joker had the feeling they'd never take it off. Just leave him forgotten in the cell like a velveteen rabbit, only to be dragged out and dusted off when the ACLU came through to ensure that Arkham's crazies were as happy and healthy as anyone locked up in a loony bin could be. Even _his _wellbeing would matter to those people; at least, they'd have to act as if it did. The thought of anyone lobbying for his rights would be funny, if he wasn't bored to the brink of a coma.

He stalked around the perimeter of the cell, body tensed like a cable wound to its tightest, taut with energy he couldn't release. There wasn't much the Joker couldn't tolerate. Fatigue and hunger could be subdued, and the elements, be it rain or snow or blazing heat, didn't trouble him either. They could be ignored. Most anything could be put out of his mind until he cared to acknowledge. Injuries weren't important unless they were immediately life-threatening, and he welcomed pain, lusted for it when he knew it was forthcoming. His worldly experiences were akin to standing under a waterfall; he could drink in what he wanted, or move his hands through the water and change the course, but if he didn't want to interact, he could let it flow over him, stay unchanging beneath.

Boredom, though, that was different.

The world, as a whole, was boring. The Joker had resigned himself to that fact long ago; couldn't remember a time when he hadn't realized that. But outside, it was manageable. Outside, he had his suit. His knives. His arsenal, his henchclowns, everything he needed to add splashes of color to the black and white canvas that was Gotham City. Here, locked away without any of that, without anyone to talk to—people, for the most part, were also unbearably dull, but at least he could bounce words off them—the Joker couldn't keep it at bay. Hunger, thirst, and damage, he viewed as external forces, something he could battle until there was no other recourse. But boredom worked its way inside, twisting and fraying at the connections in his mind until it was broadcast over every frequency.

The Joker stopped pacing, kicked the bed. What passed for a bed, anyway. In reality, it was a futon, lying on the floor without as much as a mattress cover. No box frame, no mattress pad, no springs. His mouth twitched. It was a _sin_, really. There was so much fun to be had with springs. He couldn't even bounce on this.

Giving the mattress a glare that would have put grown men in tears, the Joker reached up to the gauze covering his Bat-wounds—soon to be Bat-scars, or Linda would pay in blood. He took the edge between his fingers, peeling it away slowly, savoring the sensation of the medical tape pulling at his skin. It was a weak hold, less sticky than a Band-Aid, but given the circumstances, he was in no position to complain. True, the wounds were still t_echnically _infected, but they'd been thoroughly cleaned and they'd already started him on penicillin. He saw no harm in scratching at them a bit more, especially considering that such a privilege could be denied to him in the future.

_Scrape._

He remembered the glorious burst of pain that had accompanied the blades slicing over his skin, nailing the arm and chest but just grazing the face, a gouged line left behind, like a signature. "Batsy was here." He'd laughed, even before he fell—_where does he get all those wonderful toys?_—more amused than disappointed that he'd been one-upped, loving the fall, the night air, the wind flowing around him as he hurtled toward the ground. Loving, more than anything, the way Batman had saved him—though he wouldn't have minded death, not really, if it meant making the Bat break his rule—guaranteeing the death of more Gotham citizens, because he couldn't bring himself to cross that line. It was so _cute. _So perfect.

_Scrape._

His sense of self-preservation—which, much like his inner scrutiny, he usually ignored—warned against daydreaming on the Batman. It wasn't the danger of nostalgia, though it was true that, say, the food in a dream couldn't nourish the body. No, this was like a junkie in withdrawal fantasizing about a fix. Not only did it fail to provide even temporary solace, but it threw reality into harsh relief, making the need and the pain all the greater. It wasn't as if he didn't realize that longing for a worthy companion would only make time go slower.

But it wasn't something he could help, either.

_Scrape scrape scrape._

* * *

"He ate it. He actually _ate _it." Teresa twisted the hemline of her shirt in her hands, wrinkling the fabric around it. "I mean, I made him spit it out in time, but I think he might have swallowed it, if I hadn't. Do you?"

"Who can say?" Elizabeth sat the lunch tray down on the bed nearest Jonathan Crane's, placed a hand on the man's thin shoulder. He didn't stir, still deep under the influence of the morphine. _No one _could say, that was who, but it wasn't about to stop Teresa from going on and on until something more bizarre or sordid came along to captivate her interest. And as she was occupied by _the Joker's _antics, that was unlikely to happen. "He didn't, and that's what matters. Jonathan."

He shifted under the blankets, still too tired to open his eyes, let alone sit up or eat. Or provide a change of conversation. The infirmary's other occupant, Sylvia Everson, had come to Arkham two days ago, straight out of emergency surgery to save her from attempted suicide by way of drinking Draino. Still adjusting to the pain of partial esophageal replacement, she could barely eat, so speaking with her was out.

Which left Elizabeth alone with Teresa's neuroses. As if she wasn't on edge from being in the same hospital as the clown already.

"Jonathan. Wake up; I've got your lunch."

"Do you think he's really insane, Liz?"

If she'd been the praying sort, she'd be petitioning God to put His hands over her coworker's mouth about now. Friends or not, these were the type of conversations that made her wish for cold and flu season, if only for increased patients to serve as a distraction. Didn't they deal with enough human misery without throwing a terrorist's psyche into the mix? "I don't think a sane person would act that way." She didn't want to _comprehend _a sane person committing all those unspeakable crimes. "Come on, Jonathan."

His eyes opened, sluggishly tracking her movements as she helped him into a sitting position. His arms were still bruised a violent black and blue, poor thing, with only a faint ring of yellow that hadn't been there yesterday around the markings to indicate that they were healing. She shuddered to think of how the bruising over his ribs must still look, forcing herself off that train of thought by looking only at his eyes, free of injury, if not the haze of drugs. "Can you eat by yourself?"

It took him a good minute to process the question, eyes drifting as he thought. Elizabeth had been the one to examine him when he was first admitted, and the change in his demeanor from one infirmary visit to the next made her stomach turn knots, if she dwelled on it. During his check in, he'd been silent as now, but an angry silence, as though he wanted to scream but couldn't trouble himself to put forth the effort. He hadn't quite pulled away when she examined him, but his body language had made it all too clear that he didn't appreciate the touch. She'd thought he acted like spoiled royalty then. But a spoiled inmate disturbed her less than one too lifeless to move or speak. Sure, he was doped, but Elizabeth doubted that accounted for all of his lethargy. She tried not to focus on it.

Jonathan nodded, and she placed the tray on his lap, making sure it was balanced. His difficulty in picking up the fork made it immediately apparent that he wasn't able to eat by himself, or at least without supervision.

"So you don't think he—"

"Is Sylvia all right?"

Teresa, who'd now twisted her scrubs so badly Elizabeth wasn't sure an iron could get them out, paused mid-question, brows furrowing. "What?"

"Is she having trouble eating?"

"Um." Teresa pulled at the hem of her shirt for the final time, before walking off toward Sylvia's bed to check.

Elizabeth shook her head, as if that could clear her anxieties away. Sick patients, injured patients, patients who tried to kill themselves with cleaning supplies. It was bad enough without adding killer clowns to the mix. She was starting to feel like one of those cops in suspense movies; lecturing on how people in their line of work had to put disturbing images out of their heads, or be torn apart by them.

So she willed herself to stop thinking about it, and focused on helping Jonathan Crane properly hold a fork.

* * *

"I mean, he's somewhere in this building." Karen moved as if she was going to impale a piece of pizza on her spork, turning the utensil at the last second to saw through the dough instead. It took skill to slice something—particularly something as rubbery as Arkham's pizza crusts—into bits with a spork. Karen had it down to a science. "Can you imagine?"

"Yes, we can, and none of us want to." In contrast to Karen's almost full plate, Victoria's was empty, save for a few wayward crumbs. Just like always. In all the time that Lucy had been here, Victoria always finished in the first ten minutes, waiting for the other patients who couldn't go until their plates were clean before she'd leave, chatting away while everyone else filtered out of the cafeteria. Some days, Lucy, being one of those patients, resented it, feeling she was a burden.

But days like today, she appreciated it. They needed to stick together, when there were monsters like the Joker lurking the hospital halls. She stared at her own plate, and the half-finished slice of cheese pizza there. Nauseating. It wasn't the amount—it _hurt_ to eat that much, true—that bothered her, so much as the content. Cheese pizza: two hundred and seventy-two calories. Brownie: two hundred and forty-three calories. Fruit salad, straight out of the can and loaded with preservatives: two hundred and ten calories. All of them empty, and loaded with carbs besides. Arkham really should re-evaluate what it considered a healthy diet.

"I'm just saying. The police couldn't hold him." Karen readjusted the hat—contraband to all patients whose hair wasn't falling out from malnutrition—lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. She'd been in the infirmary when the Joker threatened to make Gotham play by his rules. She'd missed the worst of it, the panic and rumors spreading from patient to patient like the flu, and that horrible news report with Mike Engel hanging upside down. For her, this was verging on entertainment, and that turned Lucy's stomach as much as the pizza. "What if we can't—"

"The police didn't have sedatives," Lucy countered, poking at a cherry in the fruit salad and wincing at the syrupy sheen on it. "They'll have him strapped to the floor and drugged unconscious."

"Exactly." Victoria twisted the end of her ponytail, threatening to pull it loose from the hair tie. "Look, my _parents _were on that ferry. I don't want to think about what could have happened, and I don't want to think about _him._ He checked in, he's in the secure ward, and we'll never—"

She went on, but that was the point that Lucy stopped listening. _He checked in. _He must have, everyone did, but she hadn't thought of that, hadn't considered that he'd be in the infirmary. She'd tried not to think of the Joker at all, though that had proved inevitable this morning. Lucy had been in art therapy, waiting to move to group, but the supervisor had held them an extra five minutes, explaining that the Joker was being moved, so the hospital had gone into lock down. It was to keep them safe.

It had almost given Lucy a panic attack.

Routine was the only thing she had to cling to, in a place like this. It was the only stable thing in her world and this clown had come and torn that to bits just by walking down the hall. Truth be told, that frightened her as much as his presence. She'd forced herself to breath evenly—_he's never getting out of his cell, this will never happen again_—and managed to recover, forcing him out of her mind.

But he'd been in the infirmary.

"Dr. Crane's in there."

It wasn't until she raised her head to see Karen and Victoria staring at her that Lucy realized she'd spoken aloud.

"What?"

"Dr. Crane." Her palms were sweating, heart already starting to pound. "He's still in the infirmary." God knew how long he'd be there, after what the orderlies had done. "He was there. With the Joker."

Her fear was met with blank stares. "And?"

"The Scarecrow probably swapped crime stories with him." Karen slipped a miniscule piece of pizza into her mouth, chewing slowly. "I really doubt his life's in danger."

"Don't call him that." They hadn't met Dr. Crane, didn't understand. For them, the doctor existed only in news reports and horror stories: the mad doctor that had tortured his own patients, and tried to poison all of Gotham. For them, Dr. Crane existed in black and white.

For her, he'd been a doctor. Just a doctor. Cold and quiet, never speaking about himself in their sessions, always forcing her back on topic when she tried to evade, but far from evil. He'd never tortured her, or drugged her and used her to distribute toxins into the water lines. He'd been a last resort after her insurance had run out and she'd moved to the state hospital, and with him, there had been improvements, talk of release.

Until the night of the asylum breakout, when everything had gone to hell. She'd lost her stability, she'd lost half the staff and patients she associated with, and the Narrows poisoning had shaken her badly, badly enough to slip back into old habits after the antidote had been administered.

She ought to hate him for that. But he'd helped her, and Lucy couldn't bring herself to forget it. The world was make up of black and whites—routine, chaos, fat, thin, good, evil—but people were more complicated. Trusting him might be masochistic, but she couldn't flip her emotions off like a light switch, or force herself not to care.

Karen and Victoria exchanged a look, shook their heads. Lucy's free hand clenched. "Sorry. But Lu, they wouldn't let him run wild in there, either. They probably had him chained up as soon as he stepped in."

"Right. The Sc—Dr. Crane is fine. You'll see."

Hospitalized and assaulted was far from fine, but thinking of the man's current predicament was just as bad as worrying over his hypothetical situation. With a nod and an inward sigh, she forced herself to forget about it, and relented to take a bite of the sugar-saturated salad. She chewed fifty times, each of them slow, wondering if the calories she burned moving her jaw would offset the calories in the fruit.

* * *

_Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape, scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape._

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."

The Joker wasn't sure why he'd started singing. Lunch had arrived—he'd kicked the futon again upon realizing he wouldn't be removed from the cell to eat—soon after he'd peeled back the gauze. He'd relented aggravating the wound in favor of consumption, discovering that Arkham made pizza a hell of a lot better than it prepared scrambled eggs. He'd tried to entertain himself with the tray, once it was empty, but the plastic refused to snap and it didn't make for a good Frisbee. Not that there was anyone to throw it to. After a while—he had no sense of time without a window or clock—an orderly removed it, shaking all the while. The Joker had bared his teeth at him; watched the man race from the room, all but wetting himself.

It had been amusing, for a time. Then that had faded.

_Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape, scrape scrape scrape scrape._

"You make me happy, when skies are gray."

There had been dinner, after that. The Joker wasn't sure what he had eaten then, and he didn't want to consider it. He wasn't about to judge the entire cafeteria system based on a day's worth of meals, but if things carried on this way, he'd have to write a letter of complaint. Even if the pizza had been delicious.

And again he was stuck with nothing to do but let his nails and mind wander.

_Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape, scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape._

"You'll never know dear, how much I love you."

His nails, of course, had returned to his face, and his mind had returned to the Batman.

The Joker had found out what happened while in the cell at County, of course. The death of Gotham's "White Knight" would have been news enough. But with the lie about the Bat's involvement in the murders accompanying it…well, he'd have to have pencils shoved through his eyes sockets and ear canals not to have heard about it. Part of him was impressed. He'd never seen it coming, and losing to the Batman amused him more than anything else.

But the other part was furious. They'd shattered the _Bat-signal_. All the work Batsy had done in the city, the connections he'd made, the criminals he'd terrorized, _gone. _All of that, for nothing. He'd have to start over, without the aid of the police—or at most, with a fraction of it—working his way from the bottom up for a second time. It would give the mob power again. And while the Joker doubted his Bat would be foolish enough to disregard him in favor of the mob a second time, the Batman's schedule was going to get far more hectic.

_You're supposed to be at _my _beck and call, Bat. No one else can have you._

Ironic, really, the little hells the Batman had made for the both of them. The Joker imprisoned in a colorless room, and the Bat imprisoned in the streets of his own city, the territory where he used to fight freely. What goes around comes around, though the Joker hadn't put much stock in the saying until now. _I can break out of this cell eventually, Batsy. Can you get out of the bed you've made for yourself?_

_Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape._

"Please don't take my sunshine away."

His fingers were wet. No, not just his fingers. Everything from the tips to the bottom of the palm. He pulled his hand away, examined it. Blood. He hadn't realized he'd scratched that deeply.

The light in the cell went out, with only the glow of the hall lights through the door's window to illuminate the room. Probably an indication that he ought to be sleeping. With a shrug, the Joker sat on the futon, running bloodied fingers across his cheeks to make the smile they'd taken. He wasn't sure if it was minutes or hours later than he finally drifted off.

Just that, when he did awaken, there was a group of orderlies standing over him.

* * *

AN: "Not About You" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=E0MCMEn8DDg) is a song by Jonathan Coulton, best known for his songs "Still Alive" (the ending song to the game _Portal_) and "RE: Your Brains," about a zombie trying to lure a former coworker out of his hiding place. He's one of my favorite musicians.

_The Velveteen Rabbit _is a children's story about a toy rabbit.

I don't see the Joker as a self-injurer. I do see him as having no tolerance whatsoever for boredom and doing anything to alleviate banality, including scratching at himself.

"Where does he get all those wonderful toys?" is a question posed by Jack Nicholson's Joker.

Lucy is named for the song "Lucy at the Gym." "Lucy at the gym, she's there every time I go, and I don't go that often." www. youtube. com/ watch?v=9XqOnoR6Bi8 Karen is named for Karen Carpenter, and Victoria after Victoria Beckham.

The Joker's scratching himself to the tune of his song, if that wasn't obvious.


	5. Waiting for My Moment

AN: The scene in this chapter with the Joker's IQ test is an homage to 4ofCup's fic, _Not Playing with a Full Deck_, which also contains an IQ test scene. Her idea for the test involved using music, which, I think, is far more brilliant than what I came up with.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I'll tell you something, I am a wolf but I like to wear sheep's clothing.

I am a bonfire, I am a vampire, I'm waiting for my moment."

—"Temptation Waits," Garbage

No one said anything.

The Joker, blinking rapidly to clear the haze of sleep, both from his eyes and his mind, registered that as odd. It didn't take a genius to figure out while they were here. Hell, a particularly astute bowl of lime Jell-O could pick up on it. Orderlies, from what he observed, weren't much different from henchclowns or low level police guards. All muscle, and what little brain resided beneath the bulk was focused, nine times out of ten, on beating the hell out of someone who wasn't built like a brick shithouse. And in the Joker's experience, a shit-beating mentality was most often accompanied by a load of elbow nudging, laughter, or supposedly intimidating threats. His uninvited guests were silent, and while their bad decision in coming here marked them as idiots, the Joker assumed they at least had the intelligence to speak.

_Aren't there supposed to be security cameras in the halls?_

Well, considering how Gotham City felt about his pranks, the Joker would bet money that the cameras in this hall had very conveniently failed. He glanced from face to face—in the darkness, the space around their eyes seemed as dark as his ought to be, were he allowed his makeup—noting the sweat, the tightly-set jaws. The corners of his mouth lifted up; the dried blood over his checks cracked. They all looked the same. They all looked afraid.

They were dangling a steak in front of a feral dog, and they knew it. No amount of posturing, no advantage in numbers would remove the subtle facial twitches, the near imperceptible shake of their shoulders. Not this time. If it continued, who could say, but for the moment, the threat was hanging over everyone's head like an anvil on a fishing line.

The twitches of his mouth merged into a solid movement, stretching his lips to either side in a wide smirk. He arched his back on the futon, feeling a satisfying crack reverberate up his spine. "Boo."

And then they were going at him; a welcome break from the monotony.

* * *

"You can't keep doing this."

_Doing what?_ She couldn't possibly think all the bruising came from a spirited game of "stop hitting yourself." He'd have to be a contortionist, to reach half those areas with enough momentum to move. He opened his mouth to say as much, cut short when Teresa attacked his face with an alcohol wipe. _Oh. That._

Arkham Asylum had a bizarre sense of priorities.

The injuries had been discovered a little over half an hour ago. The breakfast tray had come and gone without anyone bothering to check in on the zoo's newest jackanapes, but the no-long-so-white walls hadn't gone without notice when they'd opened the doors to escort him to the shower. The orderlies, for all their poor decisions, at least had the brain waves to leave only bruises, and under the clothing, but the facial wounds had reopened during the roughhousing, giving the walls and floor padding a nice abstract pattern. It reminded the Joker of Jackson Pollack.

He realized health regulations would have them scrubbing down the cell right about now, and the edges of his mouth turned down.

"What were you thinking?"

"The walls aren't exciting."

Teresa went from "nervous yet indignant" to "nervous yet befuddled" in about half a second. "What?"

_Well, if you can't figure it out, I'm not going to tell you. _She'd noticed the bruises, when she pulled the shoulder of his uniform to the side in order to scrub his skin clean. He hadn't realized until that moment how much blood he'd spilled. It might have been impressive if he was into that sort of thing. Teresa had seen the injuries; he'd watched her lightly-lined eyes go wider at the sight. But she hadn't said anything, or marked it down. Maybe because she wanted him to suffer. Maybe because she was afraid of retaliation, should the orderlies find out the abuse was documented.

Either way, he found it hard to be bothered. Not now. "I was bored."

He could barely feel the wipe rubbing at the cuts. He couldn't feel much at all, not that close to the scars, and he would have been content to write it off as that if the arm holding the wipe wasn't moving so slowly. Teresa was taking her time, either out of a desire for contact, or because she was afraid of angering him by pressing too hard. He decided to go with the first option. It was more entertaining that way. He met her eyes, winked.

Teresa began to scrub much faster, looking at the bed sheet with such interest that it might as well have been the Shroud of Turin. "There are better ways to deal with boredom than that."

The Joker resisted the urge to giggle—oh, his ribs _pounded _as he did—and cocked an eyebrow, smacking his lips. "Such as?"

Her face was glowing like Rudolph's nose. Arkham Asylum may have dumpster-quality meals and orderlies just begging for a law suit, but it did offer free entertainment. He had to give it that.

"There are books."

It wasn't Teresa speaking, but a masculine voice, from farther back. The Joker ducked his head below Teresa's arm to confirm it, the wipe brushing against his hair. Jonathan Crane, in the same bed as yesterday. He wasn't as doped as he had been, now more "I just woke up and I'm not sure what's going on" and less "I'm outright unconscious but my eyes are open and my mouth still runs." Cutting back on the meds to prevent addiction, maybe. Or just being cheap.

He waited for Teresa to run to the sedatives and send the doctor back to his yellow submarine. Instead, she grabbed him again, blocking his view of the other bed while she wiped at his face. _Scrub any harder and you're going to raise blood. _He could only imagine how much she'd panic then. The infirmary was so much more _fun _than the cell. He could get used to this.

Jonathan Crane's words from yesterday replayed in his mind. _They're going to _love _you here._ And oh how they had. Arkham made the patients feel wanted, that was for sure. "Hey Crane. They really roll out the welcome wagon here."

"You shouldn't talk," Teresa scolded; she'd come a long way in communication since yesterday, even if her hands were still shaking. "Do you want to get alcohol in your mouth?"

"Can I get drunk off said alcohol?"

"No. Hold still."

He _had _to move at that, darting to the side again, and making eye contact with the former administrator. Even doped, Jonathan Crane's eyes had a brilliant, near-electric light to them. "I think I got the same, uh, song and dance routine you had, doc."

Jonathan Crane didn't say anything.

Not a masochist, then. At least, not outwardly. Oh well. He might be taciturn, and consider wearing a potato sack on his head to be the height of villainy, but Crane was the only one here to acknowledge his intelligence, even if he did stare at him like a slide under a microscope. It gave them a kinship of some sort, though the Joker wasn't yet sure if the binds between them were made of sugar floss or something more substantial. But he had something of a friend, someone with knowledge of Arkham's systems, someone with intelligence he could respect.

* * *

"You're giving me a _test_?" The Joker poked topmost sheet of paper with the cap of his marker—no way in hell were they going to give him a pencil—moving cautiously, as if he expected the test to hold anthrax between the pages. "I wasn't aware therapy had homewor_k_."

"It's an IQ test." If he was at all excited to be out of the straitjacket, he didn't show it. Possibly due to the orderly hovering over his shoulder, but the Joker had yet to acknowledge the man's existence, despite trying to start a conversation on everything else he laid eyes on while Ruth had pulled the test from her briefcase.

"I don't test well."

"It's not that sort of a test." He looked nervous, to her surprise, and she couldn't tell if it was genuine. "You can't pass or fail, it's just an evaluation to see—"

"Where I fit in on the bell curve?" His mouth twitched, and the Joker moved to sit straighter in his chair, putting the maximum amount of space between himself and the desk that he could without getting up. "What's _that _got to do with my mental health?"

_The fact that we have no idea what we're dealing with and no idea how to approach you. _"Joker, no one's going to judge you based on your score. The test is only a part of the overall examination, along with your physical and the questionnaires from yesterday."

"So my intelligence quotient affects my potential insanity? What, smart people don't go off the deep end? 'Cause last I ch_eck_ed, you've got a scarecrow up in the infirmary with enough straw in his head to, uh, design weaponized hallucinogens—"

"I'm not suggesting that your intelligence affects your mental health." Ruth tried not to notice the way he was using the marker to color his nails. What remained of them, anyway. They'd been all but pulled out by the nursing staff after the scratching incident, but if their short cut caused him pain, he didn't indicate it, pushing down heavily with the marker. "Anyone can suffer from a mental illness. And I won't define you as smart or stupid based on the results."

The Joker tried tracing around his eyes with the marker, only to have the orderly pull his hand back down to the armrest. "Then what's the _point_, Ruthie?"

"It's just used as an estimate to better understand you, not as definitive proof of anything." The Joker's scarred lips parted but she cut him short, adding, "And it's hospital procedure."

"Ever get the chance to _see _any patients through that wall of red tape?"

"The sooner you take the test, the sooner we can move onto more conventional sessions." Most patients hated the IQ test, either viewing it as a tool to judge them or simply fearing a bad score. Ruth wouldn't have guessed the Joker to suffer from testing anxiety. Assuming this wasn't an elaborate joke.

He moved his gaze from her eyes back down to the test, looking like a child who'd just gone off water wings and been asked to jump from the high dive.

"It isn't a long test." A blatant lie, as one could ascertain with even a quick glance at the stack of papers, but the Joker didn't call her on it. "You have as much time as you need."

His free hand moved toward the sheet, as if to dive in, but he pulled back before his fingers made contact. "You want me to take this in _marker_?"

Ruth was loath to admit that he had a point there. Ordinarily, the test would administered with a pencil, but that—along with an erasable pen—had been deemed unsafe. Never mind that even a marker could be broken for plastic shards or shoved down someone's throat, or that, as Ruth had argued, it made the test all the more difficult, it was Jeremiah Arkham's decision and she had no choice but to enforce it. "You have a blank sheet of paper if you need to work something out. And if you make a mistake, just put an X over it and put down what you meant."

The Joker did touch the test then, but he made no effort to pick it up, shifting the stack of papers back and forth beneath his fingers.

"Taking the test will give you points for appropriate behavior."

He looked up again, his expression showing something beyond anxiety or disgust for the first time since he'd stepped into the office. "It'll give me what now?"

"Behavior points. It's the system the asylum runs on." Ruth realized she'd been somewhat slumped forward and straightened, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "We'll go into it in further detail tomorrow, but appropriate behavior gains privileges—all sessions out of the straitjacket, for example—and acting inappropriately loses those privileges. So you'll gain something from taking the test."

His head tilted to the side, tongue emerging to swipe his lips. "Which is what?"

It would have to be something small. There was no way he'd be anywhere near the rec room or the grounds any time in the near future. "Books?"

"Eh?"

"You told Teresa that you scratched yourself because you were bored. Would you like to be able to read in your cell? You can, if you give this your full effort."

His hand went flat on the stack of papers; raised his head to meet her eyes. "What books?"

"We have a library. You can pick from the list."

Wordless, the Joker took the stack of papers.

Ruth had expected him to move his chair forward, and take the test on her desk. Instead he brought his knees up on the seat of the chair, balancing the papers on his legs. She couldn't imagine it was a comfortable position, but the Joker showed no signs of unease. He brought the marker to the paper slowly, occasionally pulling back before he had the chance to make a mark and reading through the question again. Ruth watched his eyes track back and forth over the question sheets balanced on the armrest, moving slowly. She couldn't tell if his comprehension was poor, or if he was being cautious. But once the marker did hit the page, it moved fluidly, if slowly, never stopping to strike through a mark.

In contrast to the speed of his writing, his face moved rapidly, eyebrows raising or furrowing, eyes narrowing, tongue swiping near constantly over his lips, only halting when he chewed on them instead. He went back through the test once he'd reached the last page, reviewing every answer without changing a single one.

The Joker had been staring at the completed final page for a good five minutes when Ruth finally cleared her throat. "Are you finished?"

He jerked backward, the orderly steadying him.

"Sorry. You looked like you'd answered everything."

"Uh. Yeah." He took the stack of papers he'd marked on, pushed them onto her desk as slowly as he'd filled out the answer sheets. The one on top was the blank paper used for calculations, still empty save for the stylized outline of a bat in the upper right corner. Ruth picked up the answers, shuffling the blank sheet to the back.

Some of Arkham's psychiatrists had been administering the IQ test long enough to have the answers memorized, knowing exactly which bubble should be filled on each line, and were able to gauge the score well without the use of the answer template. Ruth hadn't been at Arkham long enough to possess that skill, but she didn't need to pull the template from her briefcase to know how he'd done. It _was _possible to fail an IQ test by way of marking ever answer incorrectly, and, by way of filling in more than one bubble for most every question, the Joker had done just that.

Not only had he filled in multiple bubbles per line, he hadn't even bothered to stay in the lines of those he did fill. On many, he'd gone so far as to draw straight from one circle to the other, making an oblong, jagged shape. Heart sinking, Ruth flipped to the next page. And the next. And the rest of them. All like that. All worthless.

She raised her head, expecting a smirk from the Joker. Once again, her expectations were proven wrong. If anything, he still looked nervous. And not an exaggerated show of fear, like a bad attempt at a prank. His brows were just so slightly furrowed, teeth just chewing at his lip. "Did you understand the test?"

A nod. "Was it all right?"

Ruth felt a clench in her stomach that, with her luck, was probably the start of an ulcer. "You answered to the best of your abilities?"

"Uh-huh."

_Don't sigh out loud. Don't sigh out loud. _"Then you did very well. I'll have the library list brought to you once you're through with lunch."

The Joker nodded enthusiastically, as Ruth fought the urge to knock her spider plant from the desk.

* * *

"See ya tomorrow, doc." It took real effort to keep the spring from his step as he got up, especially considering all the delicious pain it would cause his bruised ribs.

Ruthie, who looked a moment away from recreating his pencil trick on herself, gave a half-hearted nod, leaving her head to droop just a second too long before she raised it back up. "Have a good day."

He found himself humming on his way back down the hallway. Even the straitjacket failed to lessen his mood. And to think he'd been worried about giving the shrinks too much of a glimpse into his dizzying intellect. There it was, right in front of her, but she couldn't see the forest for the trees. Then again, maybe he was expecting too much.

After all, Arkham didn't require its psychiatrists to know Morse code.

* * *

AN: Morse code is a series of dots (the single bubbles the Joker filled in) and dashes (when he filled two together) that are combined to make up letters and numbers. A, for example, is dot dash, and B is dash dot dot dot. So the Joker did give a single letter answer for each question, just not in a manner that Ruth could read.

"Temptation Waits" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=xvFAbl9ppCs&feature=related) is the first song I heard by Garbage, and my favorite. "Only Happy When It Rains" is probably their most famous song.

A jackanapes (yes, that is the singular form of the word) can refer to a monkey, or a mischievous/impertinent person. The Joker's name in the 1989 film, Jack Napier, is meant to sound similar to that word. The Shroud of Turin is a piece of fabric that may or may not have been wrapped around Jesus's body after his death.

The yellow submarine bit is as much a reference to _The Simpsons _as it is to the Beatles: in the episode "Last Exit to Springfield," Lisa is put under gas while getting braces, and has a dream sequence similar to the animation for "Yellow Submarine." Then she wakes up and reacts to seeing her braces the exact way the Joker reacted to seeing his face in the 1989 film.

It's said that a bowl of lime Jell-O, when hooked up to an EEG, emits the same waves as the human brain. No idea if that's true.


	6. If I Can Come Up at All

AN: Why didn't I find out there was a "Batman versus rock-and-roll" comic until after the Christmas season was over? Because that sounds all kinds of hilariously bad. I need to get my hands on it.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Sometimes I'm thinkin' I'm much too high to fall,

Other times I'm thinkin' I'm so low I don't know if I can come up at all."

—Bob Dylan, "Black Crow Blues"

"Do you _enjoy _hurting yourself?"

The Joker channeled mental energy that could have been used forming a smart remark into pinpointing exactly when Teresa had started treating him like a disobedient puppy. There'd been glimpses of it when he'd decided to sample the nutritional values of depilatories, but she'd gone back to being jumpy and entertaining immediately thereafter. Maybe it was because she didn't have to deal with him for extended periods now that he had a padded cell of his very own. He licked his lips, narrowly missing the cotton she was rubbing over his cheek. He needed to catch the flu or something; get back in the infirmary to test that theory.

"How did you manage this in the first place?"

_By rubbing my face against the wall until friction did it for me. _Padded surfaces or not, pressure and time would accomplish just about anything, with or without fingernails to speed things up. He hadn't _intended _to do it—the few brain cells that still cared about self preservation agreed that the beatings were doing him damage enough—but that hadn't stopped boredom from taking hold. There wasn't much to do when the lights went out, before sleep or the orderlies came to give the world a splash of colors.

Arkham didn't have any colors. It was all white or gray or muted pastels. The Joker imagined that hell would have a similar color scheme.

"Joker."

Had she actually expected an answer? _Maybe there are incident reports to be filled._ "Aren'tcha happy to see me?" He smiled and she shuddered. His teeth really weren't _that _bad now that the Arkham regime was forcing him to brush them twice a day; what a difference two days could make. Not that they'd been that bad before. It wasn't that he never brushed them, just that other things were more important or captivating, most of the time. Really, if they weren't rotting, what difference did it make?

Teresa stopped scrubbing abruptly, taking a minute step back. "If you keep doing this, they'll have to restrain you in your own room. Do you want that?"

He smacked his lips, considering. "Depends. Do I get to see your pretty face in the mean time?"

She ran for the bandages. The Joker smirked, turned his head. Jonathan Crane sat in the bed at the center of the row, as always, staring at his breakfast tray as though it were laced with hemlock. "Some people can't take a compliment, huh?"

Jonathan, whom the Joker was tempted to rename Harpo, didn't say anything.

* * *

Water through a sieve. That was what Ruth found herself reminded of, watching the Joker fidget in her office chair. Like trying to hold water in a sieve. The straitjacket might have limited his movements, but it hardly stopped them. His face in particular was highly animated, as if the energy that would have gone into gesticulation had been rechanneled into expression. Not that the rest of him was still. His legs and posture changed almost as often as his countenance, and the rustling of the canvas fabric indicated that his hands were moving within the straitjacket, as much as they were able. "Are you uncomfortable?"

"Are all the offices here this gray?"

"Green," she corrected, giving a glance around the room. The walls were a pale green—mint, originally, but faded even lighter than that, over the years—bare, beyond her calendar and credentials. The office itself was fairly empty—the only furniture being her desk, filing cabinet, and chairs—and while it didn't bother her, the Joker seemed as unhappy with it as he was in his restraints.

"What's the difference?"

"As long as you cooperate in these sessions, you'll be out of the straitjacket soon." She pulled her notepad out of the desk drawer, turned it to a new page. If the Joker was reassured, his affect didn't reflect it. "What would you like to talk about?"

He stopped, midway through swinging his legs over the arm of the chair. "You're letting _me_ introduce the topic of dis_cus_sion?"

"If you'd like to." It was Ruth's practice for patients during the first standard session, though she'd been dreading the thought of what he could introduce ever since she'd come in this morning.

Apparently forgetting where he was sitting, the Joker attempted to lean back in his chair and very nearly fell back on the floor. "Uh…how many sessions am I gonna have to sit through like this?"

"That's decided on a patient-by-patient basis."

"So a billion, then." He hadn't bothered to upright himself when he regained his balance, still leaning backward over the arm of the chair as far as he could without upending it. His hair draped down, curled and tangled like ragged yarn. "For a mental institution, the system's got a lot of anal re_ten_tion."

"Security tightened after the breakout." It had nearly shut them down, that incident. Between how many patients had escaped and Crane's experimentation coming to light, it was a wonder they hadn't lost funding entirely. Without Wayne Enterprises' support—the trust fund brigade must not have relished the thought of sharing the city with the criminally insane—and the antidote their CEO had developed, Arkham might have been abandoned altogether. "Do you feel your treatment is excessive?"

"Mmm, lemme see. I've been here for three days, misbehaved once—if the Nair thing even counts as misbehaving, and it shouldn't, their own fault for not watching close enough—I've been fully cooperative on all other counts, and yet I've still been tied up every time I'm not eating, bathing, pissing, or in a rubber room."

There was a pressure to his voice that hadn't been there before, as if someone had the changed pace of his thoughts like the speed on a bike. "You've scratched yourself until you bled. Twice."

"Neither time during a period where I'd be restrained in the first place, so, uh, your argument fails, Ruthie."

"And the violent acts before your commitment?"

The Joker did sit up at that, shaking his head. "And here I thought my state of wellness was decided by your evaluation, not idle gossip."

She kept her pen at the ready. "So the report of biting an officer's finger off is hearsay?"

A sigh. "One breach of etiquette and you're ready to string me up. He touched my face. No one here does that."

"The nurses do."

"And they're hot. It's completely different."

"Well, the restraints are regulation for a patient with a recorded history of violent behaviors." If they kept at this thread, they'd be going in circles for the entirety of the session. _Which could be exactly what he wants._ "There's no way around that, unless you want to take it up with the administration."

The Joker muttered something. The only word Ruth could make out of it was "bureaucracy."

"Why did you scratch yourself?"

He arched a brow. "Aren't _I _introducing the topics?"

"Do you mind talking about it?"

"Nuh-uh." He was pushing his tongue around inside his mouth; the force of it pressed the skin and bandaging out on that side. "I was bored. That cell isn't all that intel_lec_tually stimulating, you know."

She scribbled down a note of that quickly, before the Joker could become distracted by the feel of the straitjacket or the pattern on the floor. Or any other sensory input. Judging by how many times his gaze had shifted since he sat up, the man had the attention span of a fly in a garbage truck. "Would you say your tolerance for monotony is low?"

"Dunno. You're the expert, doc, do _you _consider scraping my skin open to be par for the course?"

"Is that how you dealt with boredom before you were arrested?"

"Back then there were other people to scrape. With knives." He added as an afterthought, "It's more fun that way."

_Violent as a result of boredom. _Oh, all the personality disorders that could be linked with that. Not that a personality disorder would qualify him as legally insane. "Do you feel compelled to inflict pain?"

He gave her his full regard for perhaps the first time since the session had started. "Come again?"

"Well, let me rephrase. Not to inflict pain, per se, but when you don't have anything to do, do you feel you _have _to do something to change that?"

The Joker appeared to give it actual thought, which was more than she could say for any other question she'd asked during the session. "Do you remember records, Ruthie?"

"Excuse me?"

"Vinyl records. The black circle-y things way back when that people put in the players? Put the needle on 'em, they make music, those records?"

Wonderful. Now his attention issues had shifted to derail the conversation. "I don't see what records have to do with—"

"It's a dying generation, you know, the people who remember 'em." He arched his back; sat straighter in the chair. "Which is weird, 'cause they still make them. You'd think the demand would be too low for there to be any point to it, but there you go."

"Joker-"

"Hell, it's getting to the point where kids don't even know what _cassette tapes _are. I always thought they were way more fun than CDs, watchin' the tape spin around inside, pulling it out, all that stuff. Same with video tapes, though I think kids still recognize those, since their parents would keep all their classic childhood films around—"

"What does any of this have to do with my question?"

The Joker scowled. His mouth was surprisingly animate, given the scarring around it. Ruth wondered how long he'd lived with it, to have adjusted that well. It couldn't have been too many years, or the scars wouldn't be so obvious. "I'm gettin' there. Is taking time to make a metaphor such a crime?"

"There are only so many minutes in each session."

"Time isn't real." She couldn't ask for clarification on that before he was off again, rocking the chair just so slightly back and forth. "But do you remember them?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Remember the different speeds? How you had, like, forty-five rpm or thirty-three, and if you didn't have anything else to do you could play 'em at the wrong speed? Say, if you put a Dolly Parton forty-five on thirty-three and made her sound like a man?"

"Yes." She'd done it with her parent's records once or twice, when they weren't around to get angry about it. "And don't rock your chair."

The admonishment made him speed up, of course. "Conversely, if you played a thirty-three on forty-five it sped way up. That's how boredom feels."

"Being bored feels like things are going faster?"

"No. It feels like thinking at the wrong speed. Like the record keeps going and going and you can't, uh, slow it down or turn it off. Only when it's _your _head, it's not as entertaining."

She meant to discuss it further, but he managed to derail the conversation again, this time by rocking too hard and sending the chair—and himself—crashing to the floor.

* * *

"Lucy asked about you."

Jonathan didn't say anything. He hadn't said anything since the session started, a little over five minutes ago, and Joan Leland doubted he was going to say anything by the time the session ended. She tried not to think that way. It wasn't going to help anything. Still, the fact of the matter was that he hadn't spoken once during her visits to him in the infirmary, and the nurses reported that he'd barely spoken at all. Only when he needed something. Or to the Joker.

That couldn't be a good sign. But it wasn't what she needed to be focusing on, not yet. "You'll probably see her in the rec room tomorrow."

Jonathan made a point of staring out the window.

He'd been returned to the asylum a little over a month ago, the first time he'd been back since the breakout. Joan still hadn't adjusted to it; treating the man she'd worked with. How could she? One day they were talking and laughing—though Jonathan had rarely done the latter—and having lunch together, and the next she found out that he'd been torturing the patients and planning to poison the city. And then he was gone before she had the chance to see him, vanished without some much as a _hoof print_, if the reports of the masked man on horseback were true. No one had known if he was dead or alive, as if coming to terms with his actions wasn't difficult enough.

And then he was back, and she was in charge of him, despite her protests and the huge conflict of interests the assignment raised. All the other doctors who could deal with such an advanced case were too overworked, they'd said. Never mind the personal involvement; maybe it'll help him open up. As if.

"I'm glad you were feeling well enough to be released."

Jonathan stared at the clock over her head, eyes bright and blue and devoid of emotion. If eyes were the windows to the soul, his windows were tinted.

Joan had barely gotten a word out of him before this. He'd been exposed to his own toxin, she knew, given the reports from the doctors who _had _seen him that night. He likely hadn't received the antidote Wayne Enterprises had developed, as it had been distributed by hospitals and the GPD, neither of which had any recollection of a man matching Jonathan's description. And considering the pictures of him plastering the news stations at the time, it was doubtful that he could have slipped through unnoticed.

But for all Joan knew, he'd made an antidote, and retained enough sense to return home to get it. The police had later searched his apartment, confiscated all evidence, but the night of, they'd been busy with the Narrows poisoning. Jonathan could have repaired his mind before the damage became permanent. There was no way of knowing how much of his erratic behavior stemmed from the toxin, and how much from an underlying illness.

There had to be an underlying illness. Joan couldn't force herself to imagine a rational person—couldn't force herself to imagine her _friend_—treating people so callously.

"Jonathan, I know you don't want to talk about what happened."

Jonathan examined his nails. It made the bruises on his arms all the more evident, made her want to drop all pretense of professional conduct and hug him, even if he'd hate it.

"I know you had a hard enough time talking to me before."

Joan had no insight into what he was suffering from, beyond trauma, no idea of what to prescribe or what approach to take to help him battle his inner demons. He'd been working as a drug dealer—the prosecution's argument for why the claim of insanity had to be false—so he must be capable of rational thought and behavior, but she had no way of knowing how much control he had left. No way of knowing if he was still hallucinating or terrified, or even in touch with reality, after this. Even if he would speak to give her the names of the bastards behind it, could his word be trusted? Did he even _know_?

"But I do believe that it would help you to talk about what you've been through, and I'm here for you if you want to talk."

She couldn't give up, even if it was hopeless. She couldn't allow herself to believe it was hopeless, for his sake. The other doctors kept their distance now, as if madness was catching, and so did the majority of the nurses. Those who didn't had her respect, but they weren't trained to treat the fractures in Jonathan's mind. She was one of the few friends he had left in this place—whether or not _he _considered her a friend—and she couldn't turn her back on him. She wouldn't. "And not just as a doctor, Jonathan. I'll be here as a friend."

"I want to lie down." Spoken so quietly Joan would have thought she imagined it if she hadn't been looking right at him.

"Are you tired?"

A nod.

"All right." She stood, opened the door to the office. The nurse who'd escorted him from his room stepped inside as he got up. "And Jonathan? I meant what I said."

Jonathan didn't say anything.

* * *

AN: "Black Crow Blues" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=8dIYCQgYzfI) by Bob Dylan has a theme of mood swings to it, which is partly why I chose it; to contrast the difference between Jonathan and the Joker's sessions, as well as the Joker's own conflicting emotions. The other reason is that it has another line I found very fitting, though it didn't fit into the page quote: "Though it's funny, honey, I'm outta touch; don't feel much like a scarecrow today."

Harpo is the name of one of the Marx brothers. He's the curly-haired one who never speaks. Hemlock is the poison Socrates was forced to drink.

To qualify for legal insanity, a person has to be unaware that the actions s/he committed were harmful. Therefore something like narcissism or antisocial personality disorder alone—in which the afflicted knows right from wrong but doesn't care—wouldn't qualify the Joker as legally insane.

I miss records—though I only saw them a few times growing up—and cassette tapes. Less convenient, I know, but I think they had more character, if that makes sense.


	7. My Head's Nodding Yes

AN: Today, as I was getting my Free Hug on the way out of Latin class, the guy hugging me asked if it was weird that whenever he looked at me, all he could picture was the time I'd dressed up as the Joker. For Halloween in 2008. The fact that people still remember that makes me giddy.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"And I find that my head's nodding yes though my legs are not following;

I'm inspired by events to remember the exits in back of me."

—"I'm Impressed," They Might Be Giants

"You speak German, don't you?"

"What?" Joan looked up from her desk to find Ruth standing in the doorway. She looked fatigued, in a way that Joan couldn't quite explain. Ruth's appearance was professional as always; not a wrinkle in her skirt or a hair out of place. There was no slouch to her posture or smudge to her lipstick, though she'd taken a smoke break not long ago. She'd begun taking more of those as of late. Still, despite her attire and poise, the look in her eyes and the subtle facial movements made it clear that she was on edge. She had been for a month straight, ever since she'd been assigned the Joker's case.

"German." Ruth allowed the slightest of breaks in composure, fiddling with an object in her hands. Something small and plastic. Joan couldn't make out any other details at this distance. "I thought I'd heard you mention taking it in college. Did you?"

"Yes." Enough for a minor in the language, though it had been years ago. She'd meant to visit the country one day. But a workplace as demanding as Arkham left little opportunity for travel. "Did you nee—"

"Do you still remember it? Well enough to translate something?" Ruth stepped into the office, transferring the object—a tape recorder, now that Joan could see it clearer—to one hand, running the other through her hair. She'd even perfected the art of doing that without upsetting the style. There were times when Joan envied her—yes, she had the most dangerous patient, but as least he _talked_—before shaking her head and remembering their respective situations. She was treating a former coworker who'd spiked the city's water supply and experimented on his patients. Ruth was treating a man who'd blown up a hospital—among other buildings—tortured a man on camera and sent the footage to a news station, killed dozens, severely burned the former district attorney, and threatened to detonate the ferries holding thousands of Gotham residents, if they wouldn't kill each other. Ruth had to deal with all of that. Joan had to deal with a patient who wouldn't speak.

It put things into perspective.

"Possibly." Joan pushed her chair back; realized she didn't need to stand as Ruth had already arrived at the desk. "What is it?"

"It's him." She didn't need to clarify or emphasize it for Joan to understand. "At our session this morning—"

"He speaks German?" It was enough of a struggle to imagine him saying anything in _English_, with his habit of stretching words and accenting syllables at random that her brain had difficulty mimicking. Transferring that to another language…well, Joan couldn't picture how it would sound, but she doubted it would be pleasant. Transfixing, but still.

Ruth sighed, sending the scent of her spearmint gum wafting through the air. "I _think _it's German. I honestly don't know. You're the only one here I know of who speaks it." She set the recorder on the desk, straightened the cuff of her sleeve. "It's not long."

"I might be able to." Joan's mind raced back to her undergrad days, remembering classes, vocabulary, translations. She'd never become bilingual, but she'd been close back then. Now, the memory seemed to have moved just out of reach, like driftwood on waves. She might be able to stretch her arm out to touch it once she heard, but there were no guarantees.

"Just give it your best shot." Satisfied with her sleeves, Ruth moved her hand to the recorder's volume dial, turning it up. "I just thought I'd see if anyone here could before I contacted the language department at Gotham U."

"What made him switch languages?" She still couldn't wrap her mind around it.

A shrug. "What makes him do anything? Half the time I find myself too enthralled trying to figure out where he's going to think about how we got there. Last week he recited half of "My Angry Vagina" before I made him change the subject."

Joan forced her jaw not to drop. Really, considering the things she'd dealt with as a psychiatrist, it shouldn't be that shocking, but the thought of the Joker reciting from _The Vagina Monologues _was something she doubted anyone was prepared for, ever. "And you don't know what sparked that either?"

"Oh, that one I know." Ruth massaged her temples, allowing herself to look exhausted, if only for a moment. "I told him we wouldn't be having a session the next day because I had a doctor's appointment. To which he asked what sort of an appointment it was, and when I said it wasn't important, he said I shouldn't feel like I had to cover up my problems, because he recognized that women have unique struggles. And then he did that."

"I don't know how you do it."

"I don't either." She shook her head, brought her hand to the tape recorder once again. "Here, I've got it at the right part, or about there. Are you ready?"

Joan nodded, taking a pen in one hand and a stack of Post-It notes in the other. If she couldn't translate it on the spot, at least she could write it down. "I'll probably have to hear it more than once."

"You can hear it until it wears the tape out."

She slipped the cap off the pen. "You think it's important, what he said?"

Ruth's opposite hand was at her lips, as if holding a cigarette that wasn't there. She realized the gesture and brought it back down, shoulders shrugging a second time. "I have no idea. But I'll take what I can get at this point."

Joan nodded, turning her attention to the recorder as Ruth hit play.

There were a few seconds of white noise, the tape adjusting, before Ruth's voice broke through. "This one."

Another pause, then: "Well, I see two angels screwing in the st_rat_osphere, uh, a constellation of black holes, a biological process beyond the conception of man, and a, uh, Jewish ventriloquist act locked in the trunk of a _red_ Chevrolet."

Engrossed, Joan leaned forward. Nonsensical and irreverent, but something about the way he spoke made even the most pointless words interesting. "You gave him a Rorschach test?"

"Like I said. I have no idea what to do with him."

Ruth's voice on the tape again, wearied. "What about this?"

"Ooh." Giggling. "That's one's a _bat._"

"This?"

"Can we go back to the bat? I liked that one more."

"Just tell me what you see."

"Ummmm." Drawn out, like most of his words, but lacking the nasal quality. Joan hazarded a guess that he was actually thinking about it. "Uh…_die Flamme faßt das Kleid, die Schürze brennt; es leuchtet weit. Es brennt die Hand, es brennt das Haar, es brennt das ganze Kind sogar_."

"Joker?"

"Matches. Like someone lit a bundle of matches?"

Ruth hit stop, cutting off whatever she'd said to follow. "Did you get that?"

Joan didn't respond, scribbling down what she'd caught. _Schürze brennt; es leuchtet weit…_ "Can you play that again?"

She did. "Any ideas?"

"It's a poem." The gears in her mind were spinning, pulling information she thought she'd forgotten years ago to the surface.

"I thought it sounded like a rhyme." Ruth sunk into the chair on the other side of the desk, toying with the band of her watch. "Can you translate it?"

"I think so. It's going to be rough, but—er…"the fire seizes the dress, the apron burns; it shines so far. It burns the hand, it burns the hair, it burns the whole child even.""

"Some poem."

"More than a little morbid." Joan replaced the cap on the pen, leaning back into her own chair. "Do you think it means something?"

Ruth's hand was at her mouth again, though this time, if she noticed, she didn't take the effort to move it. "I have no idea, Joan. I can't tell if _anything _he says has a meaning, or whether or not he's lying, unless he says something so outlandish it _has_ to be impossible. None of our sessions have gone anywhere. I'm giving him _Rorschach tests_, for God's sake; I thought about doing word associations."

Joan found her own complaints thrown into sharp relief, for what had to be the hundredth time in the past month. "You haven't found enough criteria to fit a diagnosis, then?"

Another sigh, so pronounced and extended that Joan felt guilty for having asked at all. "I don't know, Joan. Instinctively, I want to say antisocial personality or narcissism, but he's never acted envious that I've seen and there's no record of his past, so I don't know if there's a history of conduct disorder."

Joan found her hand on the box of tissues sitting on her desk, prepared to push it to Ruth should the need arise. Such a commonplace gestures with some patients; she'd never expected to do it for a coworker. "But you think he doesn't belong here?"

"That's the other thing." She twisted the hem of her skirt between her hands, rolling it back and forth in small, tight motions. "I can't tell if he acts the way he does because he has an inflated sense of self worth or because he's manic. Beyond the confidence, he's barely sleeps, he says his mind is racing, he speaks rapidly, and in his first week here, he was all that and depressed." Ruth pulled her hands away from the now-creased fabric, gripping the armrests of the chair. "It could be poor impulse control. But he could be—"

"Bipolar?"

Ruth nodded. "And it's not as if I can prescribe him something to see if he stabilizes. He refuses to take it."

Only Arkham could be so understaffed and underfunded that a task like sending an advocate to court in order to drug the Joker would be allowed to fall to the wayside. A reflection on how much they'd had to deal with since the massive breakout, and not on the hospital's performance in patient care. So she hoped, at least.

"Well, on the bright side, sixty more days and you might not have to deal with him anymore."

She gave a wry smile, which faded almost at once. "But if the court date comes and I've got nothing to show for it, think of how that'll reflect on me."

Joan didn't say anything. For once, she could think of nothing comforting to say.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to come in on your break and make your day depressing."

"It's all right." Joan closed the file she'd been rifling through when Ruth had come in, then moved it to the side of her desk. "You needed a break too."

Ruth smiled again. "What about your criminal mastermind? How are things with him?"

_Not quite as bad as yours, but certainly getting there. _She didn't say it. This wasn't a one-up contest. Jonathan's court date was quickly approaching, and she was fighting to push for an extension. Whatever he'd been suffering from before the poisoning—schizoid personality disorder or narcissism being her best guesses, now that she looked back on his behavior as a psychiatrist—the toxin had clearly done a number on his mind, though no one knew the extent. Arkham's MRI had broken when the water mains vaporized, damaged beyond repair by the steam. They were still waiting for a replacement. Until then, she could only guess. And while he may have known right from wrong beforehand, he might not now, and either way, she had to defend him from a prison sentence until she knew.

Joan shuddered to think of what would happen to Jonathan Crane at Blackgate. God knew he'd suffered enough here.

"It hasn't been smooth sailing for us much, either," she managed, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers.

"This city." Ruth glanced at the window, as if she could see the dreary day through the blinds. "I don't know what it is about this place."

"Look at it this way." Joan shifted her position in the chair to buy herself time, mind racing to figure out something encouraging to say. "You might not be sure if he's being honest, but at least you're discerning enough not to take what he says at face value. He was charismatic enough to trick all those men into following him, wasn't he?"

Ruth considered it, lips pursed. "He's, well, disturbingly good at it. There's such self-assurance, such enthusiasm to everything he says. Even when I know he's trying to twist the conversation in his favor, or talking about something terrible. You disagree, but you don't feel like you do. Does that make any sense?"

"Yes." Frighteningly so, she didn't add. Thank God a man like that didn't have access to the other patients. Though that did bring to mind the question of what he did with his time. "I take it he hasn't earned any privileges for his behavior?"

"That's the other thing." Ruth tapped her fingers on the armrest, biting her lip. "He _has _behaved appropriately, once he stopped scratching himself. He's not helpful in the sessions, but he's not uncooperative. He'll talk to me; it's just that I don't get anything out of the discussions. The only privilege he's allowed right now is access to the library."

"Has that kept him occupied?"

"It did. But now he says he's read all of the books."

"_All _of them?" Arkham's supply of donated reading material wasn't expansive by any means, but it did take up all of a bookcase. The idea of anyone breezing through it in a month was laughable, but Joan didn't so much as crack a smile when she caught sight of Ruth's stone-faced expression.

"That's what I thought. But given how frequently the attendants say he asks for something, I wouldn't be surprised. And it's not as if he has anything else to do." The rhythm of her finger-tapping increased. "I don't know what else to do with him. There's no way I can allow him in the rec room, or anywhere else around the other patients." Still tapping, she moved her gaze back to the window blinds.

"Ruth? I have an idea."

* * *

The Joker stared at the walls. He'd memorized everything about them, by now. The length of each side, the distance to the ceiling. The number of padded squares coating the floor, ceiling, and walls, and the faint stains, some from his own blood that had been missed by the custodians, some from inmates of days past. He'd read all the books, from _Crime and Punishment _to _The Giving Tree._ He'd read them all, and he'd memorized everything there was to memorize about the room.

Unless he wanted to memorize the futon, but there was no challenge to that at all. Off-white. Rectangular. Had lumps in it that shifted position whenever he slept or was beaten on top of it.

He'd memorized the orderlies too, by now, the ones who came at night. Faces, builds, names. Voices. They talked now, or taunted—_crazy, freak_—the success of the initial beatings giving them courage, a sense of security.

A false one. They were remarkably dense, not to realize that.

He supposed he'd have to read through all the books again.

"Joker?"

The door was open. He raised his head. "Ruthie?"

"Would you like to go outside?"

* * *

AN: "I'm Impressed" is a song from They Might Be Giants, one of my favorite groups, and the second song I've used as a chapter title to have an official music video: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=3CccPPDe2JU If you have issues with blood or gore rendered out of cardboard in stop motion animation, you may not like the video.

"My Angry Vagina," from _The Vagina Monologues_, was originally written for and performed by Whoopi Goldberg, and the idea of the Joker reciting it was one of those terrifying things that popped into my mind out of nowhere and refused to leave until I committed it to paper. That happens a lot. This is the monologue, and enjoy your mental scars at the thought of the Joker performing that: www. acmewebpages. com/ whoopi/ monolog. htm

The answer the Joker gives to the first inkblot comes from _Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth._

We all know the Joker has bats on the brain, but there actually is a Rorschach card designed to resemble a bat, ironically. It's a control of sorts for the test; if the patient doesn't say "bat," or something similar, there's a good chance that they're lying.

The poem the Joker comes from the classic German children's book, _Struwwelpeter _(Shockheaded Peter). It's a collection of cautionary story-rhymes for children, most of them gruesome. Those lines in particular came from a larger story (my favorite one in the collection) "The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches," which can be read in German or English here: www. fln. vcu. edu/ struwwel/ pauline_dual. html Clicking "Struwwelpeter Menu" at the bottom will take you to links of all the stories in the book. There's also a musical rendition of the story by the UK group Tiger Lilies from their _Struwwelpeter _musical here: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=r7P2xTxCS_Q It's so demented that I can't help but love it.

To diagnose antisocial personality disorder there must (or at least should) be a record of conduct disorder in adolescence. If the Joker is bipolar, I picture it as Bipolar I Disorder, in which there is mania with or without a depressive episode, and possibly hypomania (lesser mania) and mixed states (depressed yet manic at once) mixed in.

_The Giving Tree _is quite possibly the most depressing children's book ever.


	8. With All the Madmen

AN: Riddle me this: Is there a worse way to start a Monday than having your phone go off at three AM and realizing there's some skeevy thirty-something pervert trying to hit on you on the other end of the call? Because if there is, I'm not sure I want to know about it.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"And I'd rather play here with all the madmen;

For I'm quite content they're all as sane as me."

—David Bowie, "All the Madmen"

"Come again?"

"Would you like to go outside?"

The Joker tilted his head. It wasn't often that a comment made him second guess his hearing. Well, there had been a few from the henchclowns riding the crazy train, but after a couple outbursts on voices, brainwashing radio waves, or irrational fears, he'd adjusted and brushed them aside with a "yeah, yeah, just like Christmas" or other such reassurance. He hadn't been so confused by a sane—_profoundly_, wrist-slittingly boring—person in some time.

She had to be screwing with him. It just Didn't Make Sense otherwise. "Patient by patient basis," in Arkham's lexicon, meant "never ever ever for the Joker, even if he turns out to be the Second Coming of Christ." Bastards. If he _did _wake up one day with the powers of the Holy Trinity, the nuthouse was getting a plague of frogs. Or that water into blood thing; that could be all sorts of hilarious.

"Joker?"

"Am I on _Candid Camera_?"

Ruth, as he'd noted in the past month of sessions, had a habit of clenching her jaw while she exhaled forcefully, as an alternative to sighing. He took it as a matter of etiquette; straightforward as Ruthie was, she'd never told him to shut up or eat a bowl of dicks or die in a fire, even at the times when it was practically emblazoned on her face in royal blue ink. It was out of respect for her manners that he'd never told her it made her frustration about as subtle as public service announcement.

How long had it been since he'd _seen _a public service announcement? Hell, his brain on drugs being equated to a frying egg would have been more entertaining than sitting in this cell. That had to qualify this for cruel and unusual punishment.

"I've talked to Dr. Arkham, and he's agreed to let you walk around the Arkham grounds." Her voice took on a Katherine Hepburn-esque rasp when he was fraying at her patience. The Joker couldn't tell if it was the suppressed rage or the cigarettes. "As long as you behave and precautions are taken."

"Precautions" probably meant "as long as you're unconscious and bound to a wheelchair." Still. Even the _air _in Arkham was stifling, filtered through the system long enough to become as antiseptic and lifeless as the institution itself. He pushed unkempt blond curls away from his face, taking in her expression with nearly narrowed eyes. "What's the catch?"

"There is no catch."

He didn't need to call bullshit on a lie that blatant. If she'd been going for refuge in audacity, she'd made failure an _art_.

"You have to wear a straitjacket and a GPS anklet, and we'll have orderlies escorting us. Those are the precautions. And if your behavior is anything less than exemplary, you won't be allowed out again."

So Big Brother lurked out of doors as well. _Still._

"Do you want to go out?"

"Uh, yeah."

He stood as Ruth stepped aside to let the orderlies in, a straitjacket between them. _This has gotta be a trick. _Sorting through their recent interactions like a mental Rolodex, he tried to recall anything he'd done as of late that would qualify him for this sort of mind game. It could have been the days where she'd tried asking him for a name and he'd given a new one each session—Amy, Basil, Clara—until they reached Desmond and Ruth, upon realizing he'd been giving her the alphabet, gave up. Or the time when he'd told her she was too focused on her job and suggested she either take up online dating or hiring prostitutes.

But impatient as Ruth was, she'd never lost her temper in any session. And unlike the orderlies, she didn't seem to especially enjoy restricting his freedoms.

They slid his arms into the straitjacket's sleeves—the Joker kept enough presence of mind to inhale deeply, giving himself what little leeway he could manage—strapped the excess fabric behind his back. One of them bent down, keeping enough distance to avoid being kicked in the face as he pulled the orange pant leg up just enough to slide the anklet around it. _There has to be a catch. _They knew what he was capable of. A month of passable behavior here didn't erase what he'd done outside. They'd be as crazy as he was thought to be if they let him near the light of day.

But they were dragging him down the hall and, from what he'd seen of Arkham's layout when he came in, toward the exit. _So they are crazy._

The Joker wouldn't have it any other way.

* * *

They were moving the Joker.

Nobody said it. They didn't have to. The orderlies had locked the doors to the rec room, sealing them all inside. They didn't do that when the board of directors or the patient advocates came through for a tour. They didn't do that when they checked—raided—patients' rooms for contraband items. They didn't do it for staff meetings and they certainly didn't do it for fire drills.

Patients having violent outbursts were locked into a "cool down" room until they were either relaxed or sedated, but only since the Joker's arrival had _everyone _been locked up. Lucy had adjusted to it over the past month, or so she'd thought. They moved him four times a day total—only twice daily on weekends—as she'd overheard from the nurses. At ten in the morning, to the showers, and back, thirty minutes later. She was in Group at that time, and they'd taken to locking the door as soon as everyone was in. After that, he was moved to therapy at one, and back at just after two. Then, she was in the cafeteria, a place too loud to hear the click of a lock, too full of activity to notice the orderlies moving to the doors. It hadn't affected her routine, and Lucy had adjusted.

Or so she'd thought.

The clenching sensation in her stomach at present said otherwise.

She glanced at Dr. Crane to see if he'd noticed.

He sat beside her on the couch, looking at the television without actually watching. Some days he read. Lucy wasn't sure if he was actually reading at those times, or just holding a book. He turned the pages anyway. She didn't get in his face to see if his eyes were scanning words. The last thing Dr. Crane needed was to have his personal space violated, after what he'd been through.

If he'd noticed, he wasn't showing it.

Karen, struggling to balance on the arm of the couch—the internal support broken years ago by abuse from the patients—closed her issue of _Cosmopolitan. _She'd made a decent attempt at acting nonchalant when they'd locked the doors—if it weren't for her shaking leg and how well Lucy knew her, it would have been convincing—but she was having none of it now, staring at the window as if she expected the Pope to make an appearance. "They're moving him."

"I know." There was a swarm of butterflies in her stomach.

"Think they'll bring him through this hall?"

"Of course not." She knew that "ignore it, and it'll go away" was an immature and ineffective way of dealing with reality, from food to terrorists, but at the moment, staring out the window at the parking lot and memorizing the colors of the cars there seemed a better plan than thinking about where they'd lead the maniac. _They can't bring him through this hall. They've _got _to know how afraid of him some of the patients are._

"Why do you think they're moving him now?"

_Why does Victoria have to have gym privileges? _Victoria would have been able to handle this. She'd have looked Karen straight in the face and said, "I don't know and I don't want to think about it. Don't bring it up again." But Victoria was running on the treadmill at the moment, and Lucy was as bad at confrontation as she was at staying in the "normal" range of the BMI. She made a point of staring at the other side of the room; couches, coffee tables covered with discarded books and half-finished jigsaw puzzles, the nurses' desk and the windows overlooking the parking lot. Everywhere but the side that the Joker _couldn't _be walking past. "I don't know. Maybe he's sick."

"Maybe he did something and they're transferring him to solitary."

There was a dog in the parking lot, trotting between cars. Lucy had no idea how it got in, what with the fence surrounding Arkham—topped with electrified barbed wire—but she was grateful for the distraction now. She couldn't make out the dog well, but she imagined it was barking loudly enough to drown out her friend's words.

Dr. Crane still hadn't moved. Another reason Karen needed to stop talking; Dr. Crane had been in the infirmary when they'd brought the Joker in. He'd come face to face with that monster, right after his assault, when he was at his most vulnerable. The experience must have shaken him. The last thing he needed was reminders.

He'd said two words to her since he was released from the infirmary. "Hello Lucy." That was it. He'd given her a once over and a disapproving glance after he'd said it—"You're too thin" is what he would have said if he'd spoken, for sure—but beyond that, he'd barely noticed that she existed. All of their discussions had been one-sided, with her telling him how she hadn't counted calories today, or that she'd eaten desert without struggling to finish it, or all the other things he'd wanted to know about as a doctor. It was like when she'd had tea parties with her dolls as a child, and had to speak for them to make conversation. If Jonathan minded being spoken for, he didn't give her a sign.

"Maybe."

The silence wouldn't be so bothersome if not for Thomas Schiff.

A paranoid schizophrenic, as she'd overheard, another of Dr. Crane's patients. He'd been released, relapsed, readmitted. They were struggling to prescribe for him, so he often wasn't in the rec room or the cafeteria, either drugged to a stupor or too uncontrolled to be around others. But sometimes, he was almost lucid, and sometimes, he was with them.

And Dr. Crane _talked _to him.

Granted, it was only one or two sentences every time he saw him. And it was probably because Schiff had no concept of personal space. He did the same thing at the nurse's desk, refusing to leave and occasionally making incoherent conversation until he got attention, bad or good. Lucy wasn't even sure if he realized Dr. Crane was no longer a doctor as far as Arkham was concerned. Only that it took a very concentrated effort to keep her blood from boiling whenever they were in the room together.

_He's a _mental _patient, _she reminded herself. Not "mental" like eating disorder, or substance abuse issues. Legitimately insane. Nothing to be jealous of. If anything, she should be grateful that somebody could get Dr. Crane to talk at all.

Dr. Crane shifted his weight beside her. The slightest movement, but she had to fight the urge to take him by the hand. Karen was still speculating on the Joker, either oblivious or uncaring that Lucy had stopped responding. It could be disturbing her former doctor. She had no way to tell.

If only there was a way to say "I'm here for you" that didn't make her sound like a stalker.

Sandwiched between a silent ex-psychiatrist and a talkative anorexic, Lucy stared at the scuffed floor tiles and tried to ignore her growing anxiety. She was among friends, at least, unhelpful as they could sometimes be, but that was more than most had in the madhouse.

* * *

Ruth had prepared herself for many situations that could arise outside.

The Joker could try to run. Worm his way out of the straitjacket somehow, or use his legs and teeth as weapons. He could refuse to leave. He could attempt to injure himself on the walls or the fence, or try to eat the grass. Where the Joker was concerned, there was no baseline to measure from. Anything was possible—physics permitting—and all possibilities had an equal likelihood. Ruth thought she'd prepared herself for all of them.

As usual, he'd proven her wrong.

"Joker, get up."

She'd told the orderlies to let him walk on his own, once they got outside. And for a moment, he'd done just that. Walked, uncharacteristically silent, positively _glowing. _He looked like a child with unlimited funds in a candy store; rapturous, almost overwhelmed. Ruth had opened her notebook, preparing to record the change in temperament, when the Joker had stopped walking and pitched himself forward to fall on the grass.

Where he proceeded to roll around like a pig in the mud.

"Joker."

"Give—" He moved as he spoke, words muffled by the grass. "Gimmie a second. I'm becoming one with nature."

"You're becoming one with Lyme disease. Sit up."

How he managed to grin like that without getting a mouthful of the lawn, Ruth didn't want to know. "I'm immune to disease."

"And yet your face got infected. Sit up or we're going back in."

"Killjoy." Yet his smile wasn't diminished in the slightest as he pitched himself upright, no mean feat with his arms restrained.

"The nurses have better things to do than comb your scalp for ticks."

For a second she thought he hadn't heard; his head was darting every which way like a bird's. She'd have said it was too quick to take in anything, but that would be underestimating the Joker, and Ruth wasn't about to make that mistake. "So theo_reti_cally, I _can _do this next time provided I'm, uh, covered in repellant?"

"No."

A frown. The Joker muttered something under his breath, mouth drawn down, before glancing at the notebook in her hand and instantly losing his bad mood. "Are the sessions outside now?"

She shook her head. "It's only here on the chance that I need it."

"Aw—_ooh_." His eyes went wide, face registering surprise. Ruth barely had time to note that before his mouth shifted from slightly open to a wide smile, one unlike any she'd seen before. It wasn't a smirk, or a grin; there was no mischief or malice, nothing but happiness. "Oh. Hey. Hey, puppy."

She turned her head—in her peripheral vision, the orderlies did as well—scanning the grass for a few seconds before her eyes fell on the dog. Homeless, from the look of it, with matted, yellow-brown hair clinging to its painfully thin frame. The fur around the corner of its eyes was dark from discharge. It wagged its tail, watching.

"Hey puppy."

"That is not a puppy. It's diseased."

"It's—" he leaned to the side for a better view, nearly knocking himself over in the process. "_She's _beautiful."

_Wonderful. Now he'll want a pet. _No one could figure out how the dogs got in, but whenever one did, there was always a patient who became hopelessly attached. Ruth had never expected _the Joker _to be that patient. Not that a love of animals meant anything about a person's character, but even so. _Unless it's an act._

The Joker whistled, and Ruth was resisting the urge to smack herself in the forehead exasperated, as one orderly—Michael—stepped forward to chase the animal off. The dog dodged him with a speed incongruous to its near-emaciated frame, ran. But not toward the safety of the parking lot. No, that would be too easy.

Of course it ran straight into the Joker's lap.

The Joker raised his leg, and Joan's blood ran cold. _He's going to kick it. _Worse, knowing him, he'd find a way to stomp it, or wrap his legs around it, crush its windpipe, and she ran forward, Michael and Luke moving with her, as the Joker brought his leg back down, gently, rubbing his knee against the dog's side.

_He's…is he _petting _it?_

He was, as best he could without the use of his hands. "Hey, girl. Who's a _pretty _girl?"

Well, now she'd seen everything.

* * *

AN: Here's a link to "All the Madmen": www. youtube. com/ watch?v=_uT3NZTYpPA

_Candid Camera _was an old show in which people were being filmed without knowing it.

The names Joker mentions giving Ruth (Amy, Basil, Clara, and Desmond) come from another of my favorite strange children's books, _The Gashlycrumb Tinies _by Edward Gorey. It's an alphabet book in the form of a poem, and it is fantastic. You can see it here: www. wickedsunshine. com/ GoodVibes/ TheGashlycrumbTinies. html Dark humor at its finest, though the letter "L" bit somewhat creeps me out, as it's what my name starts with.

This is the sort of dog I had in mind for the Joker, though older and not as clean: i158. Photobucket. com/ albums/ t92/ Lauralot/ puppy. jpg The Joker had Chechen's dogs for all of half a day before they were diving at Batman on his command, so I imagine he's good with dogs.


	9. Live It

AN: I didn't think it was possible for my week to go _downhill _from that "perverted phone calls in the middle of the night thing." I was wrong, hence why I've been gone all week. But things are finally looking up, so yeah. On the plus side, I put a new battery in my laptop this morning, so now it'll run for nearly five hours without needing to be charged, instead of forty minutes or so.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Now, (don't wait and) live it (today),

The prime time of your life."

—"The Prime Time of Your Life," Daft Punk

"This dog thing has to stop."

The chairs for patients in the psychiatrists' offices were anything but comfortable. Ruth fared well enough—all the doctors did—being allowed to bring her own seat; a soft, swiveling computer chair that didn't quite recline, but had enough give to allow her to lean. But the chairs on the other side of the desk were the opposite; straight-backed, and rigid. Even the cushions affixed to the seat and backing were uncomfortably firm. Ruth had complained about it once—how were the patients supposed to open up when they couldn't even sit comfortably?—only to receive a lecture on funding, priorities, and how comfortable chairs were not a necessity in a hospital struggling to meet more important needs.

She hadn't brought it up again, though she'd had a fair number of patient complaints.

The Joker, though, was an anomaly as far as the chairs—as far as e_verything_—was concerned. Currently, he'd draped his legs over one armrest, leaning his back against the other, at such an angle that his torso was nearly hanging upside down. It couldn't be comfortable; had to be digging the straitjacket's buckle into his spine. But it was his usual position during their sessions, and his expression was more amused than anything else. "Meaning the asylum's ina_bil_ity to catch one little doggy? I guess that would be kinda embarrassing for you guys."

It _was_ utterly ridiculous that the groundskeepers had been trying for a week, to no avail. Not that she was about to share the sentiment with him. "Joker—"

"I mean, you'd _think _they'd manned up and called, uh, animal control at this point."

Gotham's animal shelters were on the verge of closing; all the funding that used to go to collecting and relocating strays now being put to repairing the clown's damage to the city. Ruth didn't share that with him either. "That's not the point. It's a wild animal. It's dirty, you can't—"

He tilted his head to the face her, convoluting his posture all the more. "I think you're _jealous _that she likes me more, Ruthie."

"It—"

"She."

"She—"

"Gilda."

She stopped in spite of herself. "Gilda?"

"Look at her and tell me she does_n't _look like a Gilda."

The dog didn't look like anything, apart from an emaciated, muck-covered health violation-in-waiting. Slightly less emaciated, as the week went on, but that had to be Ruth's imagination. The Joker wasn't feeding her, and the employees knew the risks of harboring or encouraging something that could violate the hospital's health code.

_Unless he threatened someone into it._

Ruth shook her head. There was nothing to be gained from paranoia. The Joker was a man. A dangerous, murderous man, but he didn't have the world—or Arkham Asylum—under his control. He'd hardly be in the straitjacket if that was the case.

"Joker, this is unhealthy."

"Ever heard of therapy pets?"

"Have you ever heard of vaccinations?"

The Joker sat up, shaking his head. "You don't have pets, am I right?"

"I have fish." _When did I start sharing personal information with him?_

He licked his lips, fixing her with a look that was almost sad. "That explains a lot."

"If you get lice, I'll be the one who hears about it."

"I don't get sick."

"That's—"

"It seems to me that we're skirting around the actual _iss_ue here, Ruth."

Given that the dog was the issue in its entirety, she doubted that. But the five weeks of sessions they'd gone through had taught Ruth nothing if not that when the Joker wanted to change the subject, it would change whether or not she protested. He had a gift for pulling the rug out from under her feet just when she thought she had a secure footing, but doing it so slowly and smoothly that she didn't notice until she was lying on the floor. "Then what do you feel the issue is?"

"This isn't about Gilda. I mean, sure, it annoys ya that there's a dog who, uh, manages to jump into my lap every time she's shows up when I out, and there's nothing your apes can do about it, but that's just a symptom. The r_eal _problem's that we're not getting anywhere."

"And why do you feel that is?"

He arched his back, the resultant crack audible from across the desk. "Doesn't take a PhD to figure it out, does it? I'm _bored._"

"I thought you scratched yourself when you were bored." His face had healed by now, though not without scarring. The nurses had reported more signs of irritation after the bleeding incidents, but it had never broken the skin, so it had never resulted in disciplinary action.

"Are you suggesting I go back to that?"

"No. Are you suggesting that you're being purposefully uncooperative?"

"No, just—" The Joker's tongue swiped over his teeth, eyes drifting in thought. "Remember what I told in—what, my third session? The record thing?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's kinda hard to have a pro_duc_tive conversation when my mind's going twice as fast as my mouth, and in, like, six directions at once. Look, I'm—how old does my file estimate me to be?"

Between twenty-six and thirty-one, though she didn't tell him that. "How old _are _you?"

"Haven't the slightest. Look—listen—I'm in my _prime _here, Ruthie. The best years of my life—weeks, anyway—are slipping through my fingers, and I'm watching them go from the dubious comfort of a padded cell and a—a—" He shifted, trying to move his arms. "Some sort of bondage apparel, I don't even know."

"It's a straitjacket—"

"Like I said, bondage apparel. This is the highlight of my _life _and I'm spending it with nothing but you and Gilda for conversation. And the orderlies, I guess, but I'm not entirely sure they're capable of speech. It's pushing me over the edge, Ruth, it really is."

The last thing she wanted was to sympathize with the murdering clown man, but she had to admit that hours on end in the cell would be excruciating. "So what do you want, Joker?"

"My face on the one dollar bill."

"What?"

"Sorry, I was thinking long term." He wrinkled his nose; shook his head. "Not being confined all the time and _al_ways would be nice. Or human interaction. Maybe I wouldn't be so friendly with canines if the conversation indoors was better."

There was no way he would be allowed within ten feet of the rec room in the near future. Near future meaning "next ten years." But there was a chance of allowing him out again, alone and guarded, as they did with the walks on the grounds. She had no idea where. Ruth couldn't picture the man in art therapy or anger management or any other pastime. "I'll see what can be done."

"Beat still, my heart."

* * *

"Jonathan, this isn't helping you."

He was staring out the window, as always, eyes tracking back and forth across the sky. On good days, Joan could get four or five words out of him, per session. Maybe ten, if she was lucky. So far, this had not been a good day. She had a feeling it wasn't going to get any better. No one could say for certain if he'd been ill before the toxin, but he hadn't liked to be told he was wrong.

Which, in essence, was exactly what Joan was about to do.

"There's no point to these sessions if you're going to stare out the window counting clouds for the whole hour."

Jonathan stiffened, glancing to her with an expression that clearly asked "How did you know that?" before he regained his composure and moved to staring at the clock.

So he'd forgotten that conversation, then. She had as well, for the most part. The details were lacking—where it had occurred, how they'd gotten on the subject—only that it was before Jonathan's license had been revoked, or his experiments discovered, and that he mentioned counting clouds when he was in need of a distraction. Had he forgotten entirely the way the details had slipped from her mind, or had the damage from his toxin exposure damaged his memory?

Joan had no way of knowing. They said the MRI would be replaced tomorrow; the hours couldn't pass quickly enough.

"I know that you don't want to talk about it."

There was movement to his eyes again, circular, but far too slowly to be a roll. Watching the second hand of the clock, probably.

"And you don't want to talk at all. Especially to me."

His eyes moved to her for the briefest of seconds before returning to their path.

It was the first time she'd acknowledged the conflict of interest caused by her position as his psychiatrist. Much of Arkham's staff had left after the breakout and toxin exposure—Joan could hardly blame them—leaving the number of doctors experienced enough to deal with advanced cases all the more dwindling, and herself as the only one with enough time to treat him. She'd never told Jonathan that, as she'd never told him how much she'd argued against the placement. She'd worried that bringing it up at all would further convince him that there was nothing to be gained from cooperating.

But she'd tried everything else, and besides, if Joan expected him to be honest with her, she had to be honest with him.

"I know it's uncomfortable, having me as your psychiatrist. It's a bad situation all around. But I want to make the best of it, and that's not happening when you spend the sessions staring at the clouds or the clock."

He'd lost weight in the last month. Not a drastic amount, perhaps a few pounds, but on such a small frame, even the slightest loss looked massive. Jonathan looked frail, exhausted, despite his attempts at a nonchalant expression and posture. The compulsion she'd felt to hug him during their first session had yet to fade. If anything, it became stronger as time passed. And as Jonathan's condition deteriorated.

It _hurt _to see him like this. It was almost physically painful. He'd been a brilliant doctor. He'd been her _friend. _And he was barely thirty; far too young to be leading this train wreck of a life. Beyond the distress their previous relationship has caused, it still hurt to think of all that wasted potential.

"And I'll do anything I can to make this more comfortable for you."

His mouth twitched. It was a common occurrence when she spoke to him. Joan theorized that it was his way of restraining himself from saying something rude. She'd take the rudeness over the silence, any day. The same went for shouting or swearing or speaking in tongues or anything else. Even if it was unintelligible. At least he'd be communicating.

"If you wanted to restructure the sessions, or take a different approach, anything like that."

That got the briefest of glances; the thought of being in charge of something to do with therapy—or his life in general—must still appeal to him.

"I've been thinking that you might benefit from relaxation techniques. Meditation, or hypnotherapy, maybe."

Another look, and this one wasn't happy. Joan had figured as much. Control meant just as much to Jonathan as respect, and of course he'd take her statement as a suggestion that he'd lost his grip on himself.

"You don't have to if you don't want to. Just…think about it for me, all right?"

Jonathan straightened a crease on his pant leg.

"Jonathan?"

He lowered his head, now focused on the carpet.

She glanced at the clock behind the desk, recapping her pen. They were out of time.

"I will."

It took every bit of her restraint not to hug the man on the rare occasions that he did speak. She actually had to grip the edge of the desk, to keep herself in check. "Thank you, Jonathan."

"Can I go?"

She nodded. "You're having the MRI tomorrow afternoon, don't forget."

He didn't answer that time, and nor did he acknowledge her goodbye as he walked through the door.

* * *

"Sweet dreams be yours, dear, if dreams there be; sweet dreams to carry you close to me."

There were no windows in the cell, a fact he'd lamented at least eleven hundred times a day since he'd been introduced to the place. It had _not _been the start of a beautiful friendship, or a beautiful rivalry, or anything approaching the concept of beauty, or even prettiness. The Joker hated the cell, and he was fairly sure that if the cell had emotions, it would hate him right back, seeing him as the speck of dirt in the oyster, and not the pearl. Not that he cared what the cell thought. He hoped his presence got its padding in a twist. It deserved it.

Anyway, there were no windows, so he couldn't be sure if it was night time. The song wouldn't fit if it wasn't, but it was after dinner and he was bored, so close enough. He needed something to do other than smack his head against the wall. Which he was still doing, but at least it was in time to the music.

"I wish they may and I wish they might; now goodnight, my someone, goodnight."

He needed to ask Ruth if he could have access to newspapers. Something he kept meaning to bring up, but that got lost to the billion other thoughts sparking and whirling in his mind like a cell phone in a blender. Needed to see what was happening in Gotham. How the Batman was faring in the cage he'd built around himself.

"True love can be whispered from heart to heart, when lovers are parted, they say."

The Joker was locked in a cell, so boring and white that it _hurt_ just to look at, but the Batman was locked in his own city, watching it crumble before his eyes. And unlike the Joker, he'd chosen his cell. All to protect the delicate little minds of the Gothamites. _Congratulations, Bats. You won. Was it worth it?_

"But I must hold onto a wish and a star…"

He couldn't hate Batman for it, even if it did spoil all the fun the Joker had established. His link with humanity was infuriating, but it was also what gave him his little rule, made him the Joker's polar opposite. Made him so _funny. _Clinging so desperately to the morals of a society that had been so quick to shun him, as though _that _would keep the monster inside at bay. He'd never really _wanted_ to know the face behind the mask, just to see how far Batman would go to conceal the thing he was so hell bent on preserving.

"…as long as my heart doesn't know who you are."

The door opened. So it _was _the night, then. The Joker couldn't help but smirk. _I may be in a padded cell forever, Batsy, but are _you _faring any better?_

"Evening, boys."

* * *

AN: "The Prime Time of Your Life" (en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ The_Prime_Time_of_Your_Life) is the second song I've chosen with an official video, which you will notice I have not linked, giving the Wikipedia article on the song instead. The reason being that this is the only video I've ever seen that disturbed me too much to watch a second time, and I don't want to spring it on people without warning. I love the song, and I can get through the first half of the video just fine, but the ending…augh. Maybe I'm just squeamish, but I'm not taking that chance and inadvertently traumatizing half my fanbase.

The Joker named the dog after Gilda Radner. And he's totally manipulating someone into feeding that dog.

"Murdering clown man." Yeah, I've been watching the "Best of Rifftrax's The Dark Knight" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=5afhUembT4o) a bit too much. But can you blame me?

"My face on the one dollar bill" is another line from Jack Nicholson's Joker.

"Good Night, My Someone" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=hC2nFFu-mj4) comes from _The Music Man. _I was in a terrible production of that show in high school (As Gracie Shinn, with all of two lines, but I got to introduce the Wells Fargo wagon, so there's that), and the rehearsals/performances were sheer torture, but I never got sick of the music.


	10. The Dream I Dreamed

AN: So I found that "Scarecrow takes LSD inadvertently and hallucinates **IN 3-D**" comic online, and wow, was that horrible. Not even in a so bad it's good way, either. Literally the only good parts were the splash page of Scarecrow hallucinating teddy bears and unicorns and the like, and this wonderful little panel: i158. photobucket. com/ albums/ t92/ Lauralot/ stonedcrow-1. png

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell I'm living.

So different now from what it seemed; now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

—"I Dreamed a Dream," _Les Miserables_

There wasn't much of a point to hitting someone who enjoyed it; a concept the orderlies couldn't seem to grasp.

It wasn't that the Joker didn't _mind_. There was a very short list of men he'd allow to hit him without suffering grievous injury as a result—be it immediately after or years later, depending on his mood—and as of this point in his life, there was only one name on that list: the Batman. No, his nightly visitors had both feet in the grave but kept right on digging. This was disrespectful, beneath him, and he wasn't about to let that slide.

But when he put aside his indignation, their persistence _was _amusing. Like a chicken with the head cut off, still going and going and going.

"Anybody ever tell ya—" A foot connected with his lower back, waves of pain radiating from the point of impact. He got the feeling he'd be pissing blood tomorrow morning. Again. "—that doing the same thing over and over expectin' a new result's a sign of insanity?"

The one that smoked a lot and took double shifts—Lotter—brought his nightstick down across the Joker's ribs. A loud "crack" resounded through the room, a sound of impact and not breaking bone. Probably. "You would know, _freak_."

There weren't enough vitriolic words in the English language—in any language—to express the Joker's hatred for that word. He managed not to grind his teeth, rolling his eyes instead. "_Nice_ repartee. Very "playground scuffle" influence you've got going, there."

Someone kicked him. He didn't turn his head to see which. Odds were that at some point, one of them would get carried away and do serious damage, damage they couldn't cover up. The Joker wondered idly what would happen then. Going by Jonathan Crane's example, nothing whatsoever.

A blow to his chest—had to have been a kick. He didn't have to see it to know. Most of them hated getting close enough to punch. It winded him, forcing out the laugh he'd held in before that point. "Got…kids—" His eyes trailed up the nearest leg to the face "—Steven? Take Your Daughter to Work Day's coming up; I'm sure they'd _love _to see how their daddy spends his—"

The Joker's vision exploded into sparks of red and black—_much _better aesthetic than the padded walls—and if he finished that sentence, he didn't hear it, having gone temporarily deaf. _Who's stupid enough to hit me across the back of the head?_ He rolled over. It stung about the same as the blows.

_Oh. Hadley._ The ringleader. The alpha-pig in a pack of boars. Some of his nightly callers had a pretense to justify their behavior; they'd been on the ferry, they'd lost a relative to one of the Joker's rampages. He'd never heard Hadley make such an excuse. There were two sorts of orderlies in Arkham, insofar as the Joker had witnessed: the ones whose skulls were as thick as their bodies, and the ones with some light in their heads, however dull. The sort who'd probably gone into this profession so that they could beat the crap out of people without anyone making a fuss. Hadley was a type two.

"Shut it, clown."

The Joker managed to prop himself up on his elbows. "That's _mimes_, honeybunch. _Mimes _are quiet. _Clowns _are laughing at you. I can draw some pictures to illustrate the difference, if that would make it easier—"

Hadley's foot collided with his sternum. The man was wearing steel-toed boots tonight. "You're not laughing at anything anymore."

"Apar…" He inhaled until his ribs burned, tried again. "Apart from the fact all this is turning me on?"

This time, the blow to the stomach was hard enough to make him vomit. That was new.

* * *

Joan took the syringe from the nurse, pushing the plunger just enough to remove the air mingling with the sedative. "This won't hurt."

Jonathan, lying bolstered to the MRI's examination table, didn't look at her. She didn't want to sedate him. He'd had enough morphine pumped into his system last month to risk an addiction, and besides, the last thing he needed was to have people invading his space and laying their hands on him, even if it was just to administer a shot. Of course this wasn't going to hurt. After what he'd been through, she doubted a needle stick would so much as register. As far as physical pain went. Who knew what emotional trauma it could spark, especially when he was pinned down?

But he was shaking. He was almost always shaking, however faintly, ever since the police had brought him back in. Exposure to his toxin, maybe, or a symptom of an underlying mental or neurological condition. Joan didn't know. Nobody did; until now, they'd had no way to check. But whatever the reason, he couldn't lay still without chemical assistance, even with the straps securing him, and he had to lie still for the scan to work. She'd chosen to inject him, hoping Jonathan would find it less invasive than a nurse he wasn't familiar with. Considering the luck she'd had in their sessions, he might find it worse.

She'd expected him to tense when she slipped the needle in. He didn't even blink.

"Jonathan?"

This time he met her eyes. There was that, at least.

"Do you want earplugs?"

A shake of the head, slow.

"I'm going to the other room with the technologist, all right?"

Jonathan didn't say anything.

He'd been here for two months, or a little over that. How much had they subjected him to, in that time? The blood tests, to determine which chemicals remained in his system. Examinations to rule out as many physical and neurological disorders as they could without the ability to scan his body. A lumbar puncture, to test his spinal sugar. He'd been invaded, time and time again, before the assault, and all the medical intervention that came with it.

Joan liked to think that the Joker hadn't been subjected to all of that because the administration had felt guilty for treating Jonathan like a lab specimen. She tried to ignore the voice in the back of her mind which argued that no one wanted to get close enough to the Joker to try any of it.

She couldn't tell if she wanted the MRI to find something or not. Brain damage…it could make him easier to prescribe for, easier to understand the damage. But the damage that he'd suffered while he should have been protected by the hospital; at least emotionally, there was no scan for that. No pill to counteract it, no procedure to cut it out. All this technology, and it couldn't anything to help him.

And each session that went by increased her fear that she couldn't do anything either.

* * *

"No."

"It's not a choice, Joker." Ruth was walking at his side, though a few steps ahead. The orderlies flanking him made it difficult for anyone to walk directly beside him without monopolizing the hall. Not that there was anyone else in the hallways. Social etiquette was that ingrained, he supposed. Pathetic. "We have to give you an MRI."

"I have the right to refuse—"

"This is part of the court order." Her shoes made a click-clack rhythm on the floor. The Joker had never given much thought to Ruth's shoes before. She hadn't struck him as the type to wear heels. They weren't stilettos—his favorite—or anything, about as practical and vanilla-boring as high heels could get. Even so, they didn't seem sensible enough for her.

She smelled more strongly of nicotine, as of late. The Joker had the feeling that was his influence.

"We have to make a full assessment of your health, Joker. For all we know, you could have brain damage that influences your actions. And we can't perform the scan if you're moving, so you have no choice—"

"I won't move."

She looked at him the way a mother looked at a child who promised that he'd only have one cookie before dinner. "You're never _not _moving." Click-clack. Click-clack. He wondered what noise heels would make if he stomped over an orderly's head in them.

"That doesn't mean I _have _to be." Drug him once, and get him to consent to more while his judgment was impaired. Even if Ruthie didn't try it, the Joker had no doubts that somebody would. Not something he was about to fall for. An insult to his intelligence, really. "I won't move."

"Joker—"

"Gimme a chance, at least." He leaned forward to better meet her eye. A hard enough task in a straitjacket; more difficult still when his body was battered. Would _that _show up on their scans, or were they only focused on the head? It would be interesting if they _did _record it, putting the abuse on paper. Impossible to conceal.

Yet he had the feeling nothing of consequence would change, even with the evidence.

"Look, you can sedate me if I'm twitchy. But give me the chance to screw up before I'm punished for it, Ruthie."

"This isn't a punishment—"

"Please?"

Ruth's hand went instinctively for the pocket that held her pack of Pall Mall's, withdrawing a second later as she sighed. "Joker, we don't have time to—"

He opened his mouth to protest, and didn't get further than that.

"Oh, all right. But if you so much as wiggle a finger—"

"I'll be immobile as an agalmatophiliac."

Honestly, she had no right to lecture him on excessive movement, considering that nervous tic in her eyelid.

There was a bench outside of the procedure room, made of thick plastic and bolted to the floor. There were identical benches in other halls of the asylum, such as the one by the door of the infirmary, presumably to hold patients when there was an overflow of activity to the nearest room. The bench in and of itself wasn't at all interesting, but the fact that there was a living, breathing human being lying on it was. Very much so.

Apart from Ruth and the orderlies—and Gilda—he hadn't seen a soul since he'd left the infirmary. And here was one right in front of him; a patient, judging by the jumpsuit. Jonathan Crane, judging by the face.

Ruth, judging by _her _face, hadn't expected to see him here either. "Joan must still be inside. Hello, Jonathan."

Jonathan Crane didn't say anything.

A nervous glance between the two patients before she turned to the orderlies. "Watch him. And Joker, leave him alone."

"I haven't done anything."

She didn't answer, walking through the door.

They must be cleaning off the examination table. Or resetting the machine. Something that prevented him from coming in. That, or Ruthie had started rolling hard drugs into her cigarettes and lost all reservations about procedure and patient safety. That was the only way this made something remotely approaching sense.

Not that he was going to question it. The Joker sat on the end of the bench the strawman didn't occupy, cheerfully ignoring the orderlies crowded around him. "Hey, Scarecrow."

Judging from the slow movement of Jonathan Crane's eyes and the distinctly glazed look to them, the good doctor was not exercising his legal right to refuse medication.

The expected "shut up" from the orderlies never came. It would seem that they didn't care about the conversation as long as the Joker wasn't outright tormenting him, and probably not even then. "What've they got you on? Valium? Ativan?"

Jonathan Crane's eyes fluttered. The lashes were nearly long enough to brush his cheekbones. "Dunno."

A month and a week of social deprivation, and _this _was the conversation he got. _It figures. _"It's, uh, not very fun around here, doc, no offense. Was it this bad when you were running the show, or is it new management?"

"It's…an asylum." He was struggling just to stay conscious. It seemed excessive, pumping that many drugs into a scarecrow. They couldn't be all that violent. It only took one good rip in the skin to spill the straw. Kind of sad, that _this _was his villainous predecessor.

"So what's your verdict, Crane?" He tried pointing at the man's forehead, remembered that he was in a straitjacket, and added, "With the scan, I mean. There, uh, field mice in the straw or what?"

Jonathan Crane's shoulders made a movement that could have been a shrug, were he not drugged and lying down.

A moment passed in silence.

"Is it incredibly boring in this place, or is that just me?"

The Scarecrow didn't answer.

The Joker wondered if it was the sedatives, or if his conversation skills were always this poor. "Hey, you're a shrink, right?"

He blinked so slowly that he looked as if he was falling asleep. "Yes?"

"So you're familiar with Jung and Freud? Know that they used to be friends, had a falling out, all that?"

Something that might have been irritation in more lucid circumstances flashed—dragged—in Crane's eyes. "Of course."

"Right. They agreed to interpret each other's dreams—you show me yours and I'll show you mine, and all that—and Jung went first, but Freud didn't offer back. Talk about, uh, being stuck in the phal_lic_ phase. And that was the end of a beautiful friendship."

Jonathan Crane's eyebrows furrowed at a glacial pace. "Your…point?"

"I'm bored. And I had a dream last night that I don't quite ge_t_. Wanna play? We don't have to analyze. I don't know _how_, actually. We just tell."

His eyes closed again, sluggishly, like a life-size porcelain doll with a bad haircut and outfit. Certainly he was pale and thin enough. The Joker was about to concede defeat when Jonathan nodded.

"You first, Harpo."

One eye opened, stared, closed again. "There's…a room."

"Is it white?"

A nod.

"Figures."

"In the room…alone. Outside, there's…breathing. Pounding. Trying to get in. The door…bleeds."

"Bleeds?"

"The walls bleed. And it…comes inside, and the room…is dark, and I can…feel its breath. Its tongue. And the door…won't open." Jonathan Crane opened his eyes, looked up at the Joker. Again, too drugged for the Joker to distinguish between an imploring look and a passive one.

"Like I said, I'm bad at this." He sucked on his scars, thinking. "But if I had to guess? Lay off the acid before bed, Jonny."

His mouth twitched. Amusement, maybe, or disgust. Or just a movement. "Yours?"

"'Kay. I'm walking through Gotham—it _might _be Gotham, I really can't tell. It's all gray and indistinct; more so than usual, I mean. Like a photo that's overexposed, with the _form _of the subject, but none of the detail, you know?"

With the faintest of nods, Jonathan Crane closed his eyes.

"So I'm walking down the sidewalk—again, I _assume _it's the sidewalk, 'cause I can't really make it out—and there are people, but they're as blurry as the buildings, all black and white and grey. Maybe a flash or two of sepia, but nothing else. So I keep on walking, and then I see it. There's a person, and I can't make out, uh, gender or age or anything. It's like looking at a silhouette. Black, but defined. There's another _person_, Crane. A person walking away.

"So I try and follow, but the sidewalk-ness is crowded. I shove someone out of the way, and he—she—whatever, falls on the ground, and _breaks. _Like an Easter egg. And _color _spills out, and form with it. It's not a shape anymore, it's a woman, and the sidewalk's still gray, but it's got detail. And I keep moving, and working my way through the crowd, and the whole world lights up where I've been, where I've pushed. It was beautiful. I think, I didn't stop to look. But the person keeps moving away, and, uh, the crowd doesn't get any thinner, no matter how much I break."

The door to the procedure room opened. Ruth stuck her head out. "Joker? They're ready for you."

He didn't stand. "So, uh, what's your diagnosis, doc?"

Jonathan Crane, having fallen asleep, didn't say anything.

* * *

AN: Here's "I Dreamed a Dream" from _Les Miserables_: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=Yt-IBJpEMzA I've had a special place in my heart for that musical ever since I won gold at my local state Solo and Ensemble competition singing "On My Own."

Hadley is named for the guard in _The Shawshank Redemption. _Watch it, if you haven't.

A lumbar puncture is a procedure where spinal fluid is drawn out with an enormous needle.

Agalmatophilia is an immobility/statue fetish.

I should take this time to point out that the Jonathan in this fic is a bit more psychologically off than the Jonathan in my other stories. Also, I believe "Jonathan didn't say anything" is the most written sentence in this story.

The sitting on a bench with Jonathan sedated bit was somewhat inspired by my sister waking me up after my wisdom tooth extraction. Only she did it with a Vulcan mind meld. Or so she said.


	11. Sleep Now and Rest

AN: It's snowing here in Indiana. At least, my part of it. And by snowing I mean almost a blizzard. I'd absolutely love it if my snow boots weren't leaking.

If you're wondering where I've been all week, I'd like to say doing schoolwork. And it has been schoolwork, for the most part. Thursday, however, was spent watching the horror series _Marble Hornets _(www. youtube. com/ user/ MarbleHornets?blend=2&ob=1&rclk=cti)on Youtube. I highly recommend it. Just not at night.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Round your head, flowers gay bring you slumber today.

Go to sleep now and rest; may these hours be blessed."

—"Brahms Lullaby"

"He consented to hypnosis?"

The staff break room in Arkham Asylum was nicer than the facility's rec room, but only in the sense that carpet and walls were free of stains and crayon markings. The paint on the walls was still peeling—the hospital's funding wasn't based on the appearance of the employees' areas, so there was never any budget devoted to redecorating—and the carpet still worn from years of use. Joan was fairly sure that the only thing in the room less than five years old was the calendar. If there was a way to avoid replacing _that_, the administration would have utilized it in a heartbeat.

At least the break room didn't have that faint odor of urine that no amount of bleach could remove from the rec room.

"I asked him while he was still coming off the sedatives." She raised her coffee mug to her lips and drank, watching over the rim as Ruth added creamer to her own cup. "I'm sure that helped."

Ruth's smile didn't reach her dark-circled eyes, but Joan wasn't offended by the realization. She was tired. Exhausted. They all were, to a matter of degree, and Ruth more than any of them. Considering the identity of her most difficult patient, it was to be expected.

Her most difficult patient who had managed to get Jonathan _talking_, as Ruth had informed her while the Joker was being strapped down for the MRI. Joan's hand clenched around the handle of her mug with such force that she was surprised the ceramic didn't splinter. _He's manipulative_. She tried to breathe deeply without betraying her frustration. _It's what he does. He coaxes people into doing what he wants. Especially the mental ill. _Jonathan was brilliant, but he was also entirely unhinged, which had to make things easier for the clown.

It didn't make her failure to get her patient talking sting any less.

"Do you think he'll allow himself to be induced?" Ruth's spoon clinked against the sides of her mug as she stirred. "I mean, you said he hasn't been open to traditional therapy."

True, and Joan still wasn't sure why she'd had the idea to introduce Jonathan to hypnotherapy in the first place. Jonathan _could_ be open to the power of suggestion, but considering how resistant he'd been in their sessions, she doubted it. Truth be told, she was running out of ideas. And if Hugo Strange could work miracles, and this did work, she could only imagine how much more _that _would sting. "Strange says he's had experience with anxious patients."

"And?" There was a faint glimmer to Ruth's eyes. Something in Joan's tone must have betrayed her.

"And Jonathan might have received a mild sedative with his usual medications this morning."

In all the years they'd worked together, she'd never become fully accustomed to Ruth's giggling. It was such a light, happy sound, so different from her usual demeanor, which ranged from stern to wry with little variation. Not that it was unnerving. If anything, hearing Ruth laugh always brightened her day. "He's going to be furious with you."

Joan shrugged, placing a hand over her mouth to conceal her grin. "If it helps."

"I can't tell you how often I've said that about the Joker."

That name again. It wasn't often she developed a dislike of a patient she'd never treated. Then again, it wasn't often that a murderer with a penchant for garish makeup made more headway with a patient than she could. "How did he handle the MRI?"

Her already-diminishing smile faded entirely. The look that replaced it wasn't unhappy, just thoughtful. "I don't think he likes enclosed spaces."

So the Clown Prince of Crime feared something. She was disgusted with herself for the flicker of amusement that gave her. _What is wrong with me?_ "Did he struggle?"

"No, but he was pale when it was over. Paler than usual, I mean."

"Can't say that I blame him." She'd had an MRI two years ago, for a knee injury, and even with a lit chamber and earplugs to distract from the sound, it had been miserable.

"No, neither can I. Still—" Ruth shrugged, wiping a stray hair from the shoulder of her blouse. "It's strange. This entire time I've been trying to avoid falling into the belief that he's different. I've been reminding myself time and time again that he's only human, that he's not special, and that I can't hold him to a different standard than anyone else. But it's still surprising that he feels fear."

Joan had done that with the Joker as well, without realizing it. _Only I placed him below everyone else, not above them. _She'd marginalized his humanity, neglecting to factor in things such as a need for companionship, and she'd been amused at the thought of his discomfort. All because he'd gotten her friend to speak when she couldn't.

Joan could have slapped herself. "Ruth?"

"Yes?"

"How did the Joker seem after he spoke with Jonathan? Before you put him in the MRI, I mean."

"I don't know." She sat her mug on the table. "Like his usual self, I suppose; flirting with the nurses securing him, and all that. He wasn't as loud as usual, but he was a lot livelier than when we were through. Why?"

"Because after they talked, Jonathan spoke to me when he woke up. Not very much," she added, on seeing Ruth's look of surprise. "Just a few words. But he did speak. I don't know if it was the sedatives or—"

"Or having a conversation." Ruth's fingers tapped over the pack of cigarettes in her pocket, biting gently on her lip as she thought. "Are you suggesting—"

"I wouldn't let them speak to each other without supervision. Or orderlies. Or restraints, on his part." It was an insane suggestion and she knew it, driven by desperation and the need to repent for her thoughts on the clown, even if no one knew them but her. Still, if it worked…

"Arkham's never going to approve this. Not with the two highest security risk patients in the—"

"He can't keep the Joker away from other people forever." Even if it was the safest course of action. The patient advocacy groups would realize that he'd had no major infractions in his time there and protest about inhumane treatment. Never mind the fact that the man had opened fire into oncoming traffic, solely to amuse himself. Or tried to blow people up. "Would you be willing to try it?"

Ruth was halfway through sliding the cigarettes out of her pocket before she remembered smoking indoors would set off the fire alarms and shoved them back in. She made a move that began as an attempt to brush her hair back, and ended with her running a hand through her hair. "What the hell. It might get him to give up his obsession with that damn dog."

* * *

Dr. Strange's office, being located at a corner of the building, had two windows; one on each outward facing side. One might think the sunlight—on the days when the sun actually shined in Gotham—would be a distraction to the process of hypnosis, and that the blinds would remain shut year round. They didn't. Strange had explained to Joan once that the patterns of sunlight on the wall could be useful for patients to focus on. Eye fixation, it was called. She'd heard of it before, when she'd studied hypnotherapy in grad school. But it had never been a focus of her studies, and she had no idea how to utilize it.

It was beside the point, anyway, because eye fixation only worked on the suggestible. Whatever he used on Jonathan, Joan doubted that would be it.

Strange stood as they opened the door, sliding on his glasses. "Hello, Dr. Crane."

Jonathan didn't say anything. Joan stepped into the office behind him, moving to his side to observe his reactions. There was no change in expression at being referred to by his former title, disinterested as ever.

"I know Joan's already told you what we'll be trying today."

She wondered if Strange's voice was naturally that low and relaxed, or if it was something hypnotherapists worked at.

"But I wanted you to know, once again, that I only want to see if you're able to go into a trance, today. If you are unable, that's all right, and if you are able, you'll come back up as soon as you are under. All right?"

Jonathan was silent. Joan had just resolved not to try coaxing an answer out of him when he nodded, slowly.

"Good. You may sit, if you like."

Hugo Strange's office had the most comfortable chairs in the asylum. Once, they'd been stiff and hard-backed as the furnishings in all the other offices when he took his position at Arkham, and when months of arguing for better accommodations had proven fruitless, Strange had taken to letting the patients sit in his own chair, behind his desk. The administration had quickly realized the way this looked to their funders, and within the week Strange's office was furnished with the slightly-reclining, soft leather chairs.

If Jonathan appreciated the upgrade of furniture, he didn't show it. Joan took the seat to his right—better than her office chair, even—and Strange sat on his desk, hands resting on his knees. "Make yourself comfortable, Dr. Crane. I'm going to speak to you, and you can choose whether or not to listen to what I'm saying, much as you can choose whether or not to keep your eyes open. Just sit back."

Jonathan's eyes weren't on him, though they were focused in his general direction. She wasn't sure if he was listening.

"While I'm speaking, I'd like for you to focus on the words I'm saying. Not just their meaning together, but the words themselves. What they mean, how they sound, and the sound of my voice. At the same time, I want you to focus on the other sounds. Inside the office, and from the hall, and outside. You can listen to the sounds from within yourself, if you like, your heart, and your breathing, or Joan's."

Jonathan glanced at her, if only for a second.

"And as you listen to the sounds around you, you may find them relaxing…and interesting…and you can hear all of them at once, but I want you to focus only on the sound of my voice, and listen to it rise and fall. Rise…and fall, and you find yourself relaxing with the words and leaning back in your chair."

And Jonathan did lean back, to her surprise, if only just.

"And as you relax, become aware of your body and notice the feel of the chair below you, and the weight of your legs without the chair's support. Feel your arms on the armrests, and the weight there, the heaviness, and without moving, feel the texture of your clothing and the chair beneath you."

Blinking, Jonathan leaned back a bit more. Joan realized that she was holding her breath and exhaled slowly. Quietly.

"I want you to keep listening to my voice, and imagine the texture of sounds, and the shape that the word would have, or the color. Imagine that the words have a weight, and that their weight is pressing down on you gently, making your body feel heavier and making you relax deeper and deeper. Just relax…"

Was it wishful thinking on her part, or was he blinking more frequently than usual?

"Now focus on your breathing, and become aware of how you're breathing deeper and deeper and allowing yourself to relax more and more, and as you breathe listen to the sounds around you and their weight and the way your body is relaxing into the chair, the way you can feel yourself going numb from the weight, and letting go of your body as you relax."

He _was _blinking more. Rapidly.

"Focus on your breathing, now. Be aware of each breath in and out, steady and gentle. In and out. In…and out. And realize that, as you breathe, you can focus on your breathing and ignore everything else. Ignore everything, let it drift out of your mind as you lie back to sleep and let go of your thoughts. Let your mind wander, as if you are dreaming, and enjoy letting go. Let yourself become comfortable, and go deeper and deeper into sleep."

Jonathan closed his eyes, opened them. Closed them again. This time, they stayed closed.

"And while you sleep, there is nothing to trouble to you, nothing to worry about. Just let your mind drift, and breathe, and see how easy it is to let go. Feel your body, become aware of its weight and size and as you breathe, let it go. Let yourself drift away, and relax. Relax, and release the tension inside. Be calm, and go deeper, and realize all the things that you could do, but can't be bothered. Relax, and let go. Let go of everything, and go deeper until there is nothing else. And realize how nice it is to let go of everything, to just relax…and sleep. Jonathan?"

Jonathan didn't say anything.

Strange smiled, his glasses reflecting the sunlight from the window. "I think this is going to work very well."

Joan could have kissed the man. She wasn't sure how she managed not to, considering that she was already struggling not to shout with joy. "I think it will."

* * *

AN: "Brahms Lullaby" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=t894eGoymio&translated=1 ) popped up in my very first fic as an example of something you would not want to sing to a tense person. However, the lyrics I went for with the opening quote are not in the version with the extraordinarily creepy "If God will, thou shalt wake, when the morning doth break" line.

This would be the Dr. Hugo Strange from the comics, of course. Pre-villainy.

There are different induction methods of hypnosis, with eye fixation (stare at this and feel your eyes get heavier) being the most common. The one Jonathan undergoes in this chapter is known as an overload induction. It's generally used on anxious or overly analytical clients, or used when other inductions fail. The idea of it is overload the senses (focusing on breathing, words, sounds, textures, etc., all at once) so that the client doesn't have time to worry about the procedure itself.

On a side note, I've been hypnotized before, at after prom in my junior year of high school. And it is _awesome. _Also, somewhere there exist, for sale, DVDs of myself dancing and imitating a hand puppet and imagining that I'm being attacked by a bird. No, I didn't make that last one up. I believe the induction technique that hypnotist used was relaxation, though it could have been eye fixation, as we were staring at a strobe light-esque thing.


	12. Serious and Shy

AN: Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Mother, my friends are no longer my friends, and the games we once played have no meaning.

I've gone serious and shy and they can't figure why, so they've left me to my own daydreaming."

—Suzanne Vega, "Bad Wisdom"

"I'm going to count down from five, Jonathan, and when I reach one, you will be fully awake, safe, and calm." Strange's voice was steady, self-assured as always.

Joan wished she could feel so confident on the matter. Getting Jonathan to sleep had been one thing—one _great_ thing—but the euphoria over the breakthrough was quickly fading with the steps to bring her patient back to consciousness. Having control over a situation had meant everything to Jonathan as the administrator, and here they'd removed his control easily.

She couldn't imagine that he'd handle it well.

"Five…four…you should be regaining sensation in your body now…three…breathe deeply…two…let yourself stretch, become aware of where you are…let your eyes flutter…one. Open your eyes completely, fully alert."

Eyes opened, Jonathan stared at the two of them, expressionless. At least, for the moment.

"Welcome back, Dr. Crane. How do you feel?"

Emotionless had turned to uncomfortable in less than a minute. He pushed himself up to sit straighter, knuckles white from the force with which he gripped the arms of the chair. His cheeks reddened as his gaze darted between them. "Fine."

"That's good." Strange opened the door of the office as Joan stood, beckoning for Jonathan to follow. "If you want to come back, I'd be happy to see you again."

He was silent, stepping into the hall without a glance back. Joan trailed behind him, her moment of happiness long gone. _So we're back to that. _Knowing her luck, this excursion had regressed Jonathan, and she'd never get another word out of him. _What was I expecting? _Putting a control freak under hypnosis. Maybe traces of Jonathan's toxin were still drifting around the building, clouding her judgment. Maybe she'd just reached her breaking point and—

"You drugged me."

Jonathan's voice was surprisingly deep for a man of his stature, and, when he wanted it to be, surprisingly forceful. When he'd been angry, as a doctor, she'd winced whenever she heard him berate someone, thankful that she'd never experienced the brunt of his anger. It wasn't that his words were especially hurtful, or insulting, but that the venom in them was so great. She'd once likened his reprimands to a whip; simple, small, and intensely painful.

It had been so long since she'd heard him speak with any emotion at all. Joan had forgotten how much it stung. "What?"

"You _drugged_ me. You wanted me to be cooperative, so you drugged me, without telling me, so that you could put me under." It wasn't an accusation. He said it almost calmly, a statement of fact, if one ignored the smoldering anger buried under his steady tone, like embers under ashes. She'd never seen his eyes look so cold.

"Jonathan, you can't drug a person into being susceptible to hypnosis. If someone doesn't want to be—"

"Did you drug me or didn't you?"

They were the only people in the hallway. True, she was standing directly in front of the door to Strange's office, so if Jonathan reacted violently, it wouldn't go without notice, but she didn't relish the prospect of what he could accomplish in the mean time. Even before he was committed, she couldn't remember ever seeing Jonathan this angry.

And despite that, there was a stupid, suicidal part of her so overjoyed by the fact that he was holding a conversation that wanted to hug him, murderous rage or not. That couldn't be healthy. "Yes. I'm sorry, Jonathan."

She couldn't tell if the sound he made in response was a laugh or a scoff.

"I wanted you to be relaxed—"

"So you violated my trust. That makes sense."

Ruth's forewarning that he was going to hate her came back with a vengeance. It had seemed so inconsequential this morning. "I'm sorry. I won't give you something without your consent again. And if hypnosis frightens you that badly, you don't have to repeat it."

"I'm not frightened of it."

With most patients, Joan was happy when reverse psychology worked. All too often, they recognized it and resisted. With Jonathan, it was only depressing; seeing how much his brilliance and insight had deteriorated. "So you'd be willingly to try it again?"

A shrug. There was a twitch to Jonathan's facial features, which she took as a sign that he'd realized his mistake, but couldn't afford to lose face by going back on it now.

"Because I've spent this morning negotiating with Dr. Arkham, and if you're cooperative in your sessions, he's willing to allow you a special privilege."

That sound again. This time, she recognized it as a scoff. "And what would that be, controlling the remote in the rec room?"

"No, Jonathan. Something much more engaging than that."

* * *

He and Gilda had an understanding.

Neither of them wanted to pass up an opportunity to see each other, but neither of them wanted to give the orderlies a chance to drag Gilda to the pound. Or the river, considering the orderlies' brutality and the current state of Gotham's animal control. It pissed him off, that that had been the first thing they'd taken money from. If the Joker was in the habit of performing good deeds—which he most assuredly was not—he'd be sorely tempted to play Robin Hood, robbing from the rich—or middle class, or anyone, really—to give to the fuzzy little animals. And the not so fuzzy ones. The Joker had always been a fan of snakes.

Anyway, Gilda, being clever enough to put Lassie to shame, had realized about a minute into their second encounter that orderlies equaled bad. Apart from the one Joker had coerced into feeding her, a twitchy mess of a man named Zachary. Ridiculous, how people completely fell apart as soon as someone threatened to tear off their genitals. Twitchiness aside, Gilda looked decidedly less skeletal as of late, so she had to trust Zachary. But the other orderlies were met with the same disdain a housewife would give muddy footprints on freshly scrubbed linoleum, and Gilda kept her distance.

Still, she arrived day after day. The location varied, but she was always close enough to be seen, yet far enough to get a head start should the orderlies purse. On Monday, she'd been standing on the hood of a car in the parking lot. Michael the orderly's car, as fate would have it, coating the windshield in paw prints. The Joker had come close to laughing himself sick at the man's resultant tantrum, and even Ruthie had been fighting a smile.

She'd stopped arguing about the dog. She'd stopped arguing about most minor things. It should have made him happy—sessions were easier without a "No, Joker," every twelve seconds—but life was even duller without opposition. Maybe that was Ruth's plan: bore him into a vegetative state. Would that qualify him as legally insane, or would the orderlies using his body as a punching bag be swapped for Blackgate prisoners? If he was comatose, it really wouldn't matter, but the thought of nameless inmates beating him unconscious lacked the personal touch of Hadley dragging him across the cell by the hair.

Today, Gilda was watching from the other side of the chain link fence, tail wagging as she put her front paws against the mesh. That was the wonderful thing about dogs; even when you were restrained from petting them, and unable to give them affection without gorillas in scrubs swooping in to ruin the moment, they were still understanding and loving.

"How come she can touch the fence without, uh, getting zapped?"

"It's only electrified at the top," Ruth explained, following a few steps behind him as he walked toward the dog, hoping his smile would make up for the wave he couldn't provide in the straitjacket.

"But it's barbed wire at the top."

"I know."

"Seems like overkill. Hey, Gilda." He sat in the grass, running his leg back and forth over the chain link while Gilda rubbed back from the other side. She stopped panting, sticking her tongue between the wire to lick at his pants. "Good girl."

"Don't cut yourself on that."

"Hey, if Teresa wants to come at me with a tetanus sho_t_, all the better." He alternated between watching his four-legged friend and checking for signs of movement on the orderlies' part. The openings in the fence weren't that wide, but if enough force was applied, he imagined they could stretch. Enough for a hand to slip through and grab hold of a dog, at least. Not about to happen. Not while the Joker was around.

"You need a real friend."

"Are you trying to argue that a dog isn't a real friend?" He licked his lips. They were becoming chapped without the lipstick to protect them from the swipes of his tongue. "'Cause I imagine quite a few blind people, and uh, epileptics would disagree. Not to mention all the boring or_din_ary people, but hey, there's no need to bring the disadvantaged into this."

"Someone who can talk to you."

_Good luck with that. _Even if he was allowed within audible range of another patient, he doubted many of them would be willing to speak to the killer clown. Or that those who did would meet his conversational standards. "Gilda and I understand each other. Don't we?"

Gilda mimicked his nod.

"See? _Good _girl."

"I mean a human being." Ruth had started using their walks as an additional smoke break. He wondered if he'd ever stress her badly enough to require two cigarettes at once. That would be a sight. "Another patient."

"I dunno if you've noticed, Ruthie, but, uh, I'm not exactly allowed to talk with the other patients. Unless they've been hiding in their rooms for the _fun_ of it whenever I take a stroll."

"I've spoken to Dr. Arkham. He's willing to give it a chance."

If the Joker were a dog, his ears would have perked up at that, the way Gilda's did when she heard footsteps. As things were, he had to settle for arching a brow. Not nearly as entertaining. "Isn't it a little late for April Fool's jokes?"

"I mean it, Joker." She exhaled, the breeze sending the smoke back into the orderlies' faces. "And it took over an hour of arguing, so I'd appreciate it if you gave it a chance."

"So, uh, what's the catch?"

"Cooperate in your sessions and don't do anything stupid."

It sounded too good to be true. Then again, so had the trips outside, and here he was, sitting in the grass with a dog licking his shoe as his mind raced through the possibilities. Still…letting him loose on a mental patient…even his brilliant mind couldn't work itself around that. "Lemme guess. This patient I'll be talking to is catatonic?"

"No."

"Dissociated?"

"No, Joker. You're going to be holding a conversation, after all." She flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the grass. "Believe me, he's very spirited."

* * *

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door." It had been Bilbo Baggins who'd said it, but for Jonathan's purposes it applied equally well to former doctors walking through Arkham Asylum as it did to hobbits travelling through Middle Earth. There were differences between the two—Arkham ran a lower risk of attack by Nazgūl, probably—but they each had monsters lurking around the corners, and they were both places he'd rather not travel through with only Joan as a guide. He doubted she had the ability to resurrect herself from the pit of the Balrog—in sparkling white robes, no less—any more than she was able to stop the orderlies from breaking into cells at night.

The part of him that could still be rational pointed out that it was unlikely—however, not _impossible_—that anyone would assault them on the way to the visitor's room, but he knew it was implausible in the same way he knew that there most likely wasn't a flock of crows laying in wait around the corner; the fact remained that there was a chance, however small, that it _could _happen, and even if the probability was infinitesimal, it clouded his vision all the same like a flashing neon sign that would never burn out, or even dim. Anyway, the rational part of his mind seemed to slide out of his hands a little more each day and though Jonathan knew he ought to be concerned about that, it tended to get mixed in with all the other worries and it was hard to remember why that one should be important, why it merited telling someone over the others.

And there were others, many of them. What if the toxin's damage to his mind was permanent and he never stopped shaking, or seeing dark shapes—never quite formed enough to be called figures—in his peripheral vision? What if the dreams of bats—combined now with other, unbelievably worse things—never stopped, and what if there really were crows lurking around the corner, or in the air ducts? What if the electrical wiring in the building went bad or the smoke detectors failed or they all choked on carbon monoxide in their beds? What if the orderlies came back, or Joan drugged him again, and how much longer would the laundry attendants insist on giving him socks that weren't correctly paired? And say Joan _did _drug him, and they put him under; if he gave her names, would they retaliate? What if the building was demolished by a tornado or an earthquake, or submerged by a flood or a tidal wave? The fact that Gotham had never had a tidal wave didn't rule out the possibility. What if the GCPD had left his toxin notes rotting in some warehouse, to be eaten away by moths and silverfish, and what state of disarray had he left his kitchen in when they searched it?

"Are you all right, Jonathan?"

Joan. He had to look to reaffirm that she'd spoken; people's voices had a strange tendency to merge together these days. She was wearing a wool sweater under her doctor's coat and Jonathan had to fight a sudden compulsion to reach out and touch it, see if it was as uncomfortable to the skin as it looked. He muttered something that could have been "Fine," or "Don't patronize me with your false sympathy;" he honestly wasn't sure. Judging by her lack of a reaction, it was safe to assume he'd said "fine," but one could never really tell. The line between his thoughts and his speech had become blurred, as if someone had thrown a large, disruptive rock into the waters of his mind. Easier not to talk. Thomas and Lucy had accepted that, and left him to his own devices, apart from their habit of following him around. He wished Joan could do the same.

"You don't have to speak to him if you're nervous."

Safer not to answer, so he didn't.

The door to the visitor's room—Jonathan wasn't sure why they should be in the visitor's room, but then, he wasn't sure who had decided it was a wise idea to let him talk to the mortal version of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, either—seemed to vary from too small to accommodate Joan's body, let alone his own, to too large to fit in the building. Jonathan tried to remember whether or not this sort of thing had happened before Batman gave him the toxin—he used to test on himself sometimes, in far smaller, weaker dosages, of course, so it wasn't outside the realm of possibility—and came up empty-handed. Memory, perception, reasoning, nothing in his brilliant mind seemed to work properly anymore. It was as though someone had tried to repair a broken watch with spare car parts; it ran, but it didn't fit.

Joan put her hand on the door handle, paused. "I won't let anything happen, Jonathan. Don't be afraid."

"I'm not," he said; even managed to sound icy about it. And as he said it, he wasn't. The fears were either all consuming or a mild nuisance, and while they could change at the drop of a hat, they were subdued for the moment, and the moment was the only thing Jonathan could function in anymore.

She nodded—her hair seemed to move like a separate, Lovecraftian entity as she did, and for half a second he wondered if it was Joan at all—and opened the door, ushering him in.

There were about half a dozen orderlies in the room—Jonathan's insides turned to ice until he realized that he didn't recognize a one of them, then quickly thawed—as though the Joker wasn't in straitjacket and ankle-cuffed to a chair. The Joker's smile seemed unnaturally wide and Jonathan felt the same compulsion to touch the scars that he had with Joan's sweater, but again he didn't, this time because it would be a death wish. His hair was curly, something Jonathan never noticed in the news broadcasts and hadn't focused on during their previous encounters, but that now seemed all encompassing, a detail Jonathan couldn't tear his eyes away from.

The Joker's smile widened—something Jonathan hadn't thought possible—as he spoke. "Scarecrow."

Jonathan answered, unsure if he'd said "Joker" or "clown" or something entirely unrelated, possibly in French, but whatever he'd said, the Joker smiled, so it must have been all right.

* * *

AN: Remember when I said Jonathan was slightly "off" in the last author's note? Yeah, that was a bit of an understatement.

"Bad Wisdom" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=cEz5il1Syhc) is a song of Suzanne Vega's, who wrote "My Name is Luka" and "Tom's Diner," two of my favorite songs.

The Bilbo quote is of course from Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings _trilogy.

Pennywise is the clown in Stephen King's _It._


	13. Different from the Rest

AN: Yes, I know that I've referenced this song in a previous fic. I love it and I'm reprising it.

In other news, the snow here is ridiculous. It's as high as my thighs where the plows have pushed it to the sides of the road, and we're supposed to get another nine inches tomorrow.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"We may be different from the rest;

Who decides the test of what is really best?"

—"A Couple of Misfits," _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_

"_Comment allez-vous_?"

Jonathan Crane had gone through a variety of expressions in the few seconds that they'd been making eye contact. Upon walking in, his gaze had first fallen on the orderlies, and then he'd looked torn between vomiting, fainting, or a combination of the two. Any of them would have been amusing, but they'd have severely cut into their discussion time, or served as excuses to keep the pair from meeting again. Anyway, Jonathan had recovered within seconds, going from terror-stricken to intrigued, a little less nervous as he'd spoken—"_Bon après-midi_"—and afterward, reassured.

But now that the Joker had replied, Jonathan looked bewildered, as if something inside of him had finally realized that a head full of straw wasn't conducive to thought. His lips worked as though he was going to reply, but decided against it, mouth closing before the words could form.

"_Parlez-vous français, oui_?"

Something clicked in Jonathan's eyes, like a television adjusted to a clearer picture. "_Je parle un peu._" He sat on the other side of the small table between them, as the shrink that accompanied him in joined Ruth on the nearest couch.

"_Quel dommage._" And it _was _a pity; assuming Ruthie and Jonathan's doctor, both pretending to be deeply absorbed in files that their eyes never quite rested on—didn't speak French, they could have had a nice, uninterrupted conversation. Of course, knowing the bureaucracy, that wouldn't be allowed, and knowing Ruth, that would be considered Inappropriate Behavior, and either lose him his outside or his conversations-with-straw people privileges. Probably the first one. Ruthie was a fish person. She didn't understand the joy of dogs. "So we should stick to English?" Not that Jonathan had been too fluent at that language in the previous encounters.

"I imagine it would facilitate the flow of the discussion."

So would being able to gesticulate. It wasn't a fair conversation; the Joker with a straitjacket and Jonathan without. "English, then. How are you?"

"I'm in an asylum."

The Joker decided that he liked Jonathan Crane. He'd been all right when he was drugged—willing to talk to the Joker, which was more than most lucid people would do—but like a housecat. Aloof, and always sleeping. Not a terrible companion, but not a dog either. But a functioning Jonathan Crane had other, more amusing cat qualities. Haughtiness, and the attempts to hide nervousness or confusion behind a façade of disinterest. "So you've said."

He did it again; a flash of uncertainty, barely recognizable before he concealed it. The Joker wondered if his psychiatrist was quick enough to catch these things. "I have, haven't I?"

"Yesterday. You were, uh, medicated when you did."

His eyes went cold, and considering how icy blue they were _before _he was irritated, it was quite an accomplishment. Jonathan Crane was intelligent, there was no doubt about that, but up to that point, he'd been mostly uneasy, and struggling to uphold the appearance of apathy. Now there was a hint of the man he must have been; to torture the patients he worked with every day without fear of detection or violent retaliation. He was broken, but it looked like sometimes the wires still connected.

The Joker could guess who had broken him.

Jonathan didn't say anything, didn't move apart from a small, terse nod.

On the couch, his psychiatrist's hands clenched around her folder. She gave up pretending to read, eyes only on her patient. Ruth sensed her anxiety, glancing between Jonathan and the Joker.

_Touchy._ So the Scarecrow didn't like to be reminded of his drug-induced rambling. That could be so much _fun _to exploit, if he didn't want the session to come to an abrupt, orderly-enforced halt. "I take it you don't refuse the meds?"

"It's not a luxury one can afford when one's system is altered by psychotropic chemicals."

The Joker wondered if he meant to be condescending, or if he was that clueless about how _not _to sound like a pretentious ass. Either way, being oblivious enough to speak down to the Clown Prince of Crime was endearingly suicidal, like a kitten that kept ramming its head into a window, trying to catch birds on the outside. "It still affects you?"

"To an extent."

"You know, 'Crow—" Apparently Jonathan didn't like nicknames, as he flinched—"not to cri_ti_cize, but I'd have made an antidote before I, uh, brought chemical warfare into fistfight."

"I did." Again, the briefest expression of annoyance before the calm submerged it. "You'll have to make allowances for my mental state when I failed to retrieve it."

"You didn't think to take it _before _you were exposed?"

Jonathan's posture wasn't as rigid now. He was still very much controlled—the Joker could only imagine how amusing it would be to watch that composure shatter—but it didn't seem quite as forced. Maybe his research was a twisted, unethical security blanket. "That would have been counterproductive. I had been giving myself extremely low concentrations of compounds on occasion, to see if—"

Jonathan's shrink cleared her throat. She was making eye contact again.

"I don't think your lady-friend likes this conversation."

"Leland," he said, and Leland looked wounded, though she tried to hide it by busying herself with Jonathan's file. They must have been on a first name basis before he became her patient. What a conflict of interests that_ w_as.

The more the Joker learned about Arkham's interpersonal relations, the more it seemed like a soap opera, only without the dramatic close-ups or shirtless scenes. Well, he'd _tried _recreating the latter, but Ruth had disapproved.

"Joan Leland. And Ruth Adams is handling your sessions?"

"You saw us to_ge_ther yesterday. She said hi. Though I take it," he added, watching as Jonathan blushed faintly, "that I should make allowances for that, too?"

"If you would." His teeth were not quite clenched as he spoke. "And how are you enjoying your stay?"

"I gotta say I'm no_t_ a fan of the décor. Tell me the monochrome cells weren't your idea, Crane."

"White is traditional." He had an odd look, then, mouthed his words again, as if reaffirming what he'd said. Not that the Joker could blame him; "traditional" wasn't the worst excuse he'd ever heard, but it was up there.

"So is female circumcision, depending on the country."

"I wouldn't compare them."

"Depends on your definition of torture." The Joker arched his back against the chair, as far as he could move before the ankle cuffs prevented him. He licked his lips, wondering how long one had to be in a straitjacket before blood clots developed. Surely the hours a day of confinement had to be a health risk. "It's so _boring _without an orderly or two to brighten up the place."

The blood drained from Jonathan's face; the Joker had never seen a person that wasn't suffering from exsanguination look that white. He didn't speak, didn't move, though judging by the sudden tension in his arms, he was clenching his fists under the table. Joan Leland didn't bother clearing her throat this time, crossing the room before the Joker even registered that she'd gotten up. She placed her hands on her patient's shoulder, leaning forward. She moved as if to hug him, but stopped herself.

_So that's where the stitches came from. _And mentioning the orderlies was likely to lose him his Jonathan privileges. Good to know. It only made sense, now that he thought about it; former boss, a villain, much like—only far less threatening or interesting than—himself, small, easily overpowered, pretty.

Yeah, it would be wise not to mention the orderlies again.

"But I di_gress_," he continued, before Leland could drag her patient out of the room, or Ruth could put an end to things. "You were asking about the _ses_sions, weren't you?"

Jonathan, still a chalky shade of white, gave another tense nod. He hadn't been, had only asked how the Joker liked the asylum, but he seemed grateful for the distraction, and Leland didn't protest.

"They're…" He shrugged. Ruth was a better conversationalist than the orderlies—hell, _Gilda _was a better conversationalist than the orderlies—but their sessions involved a whole lot of "No, Joker" or "Don't change the subject, Joker," or "Joker, sit down or you're going back to your cell." Also, she wasn't a dog person.

But he was out of the straitjacket while he was in her office, and she was the one who'd arranged for him to go outside, along with this little conversation. And those were things he could appreciate. "Better than it was. It's not all questionnaires and tests and surveys anymore. And, uh, invasive questions. You're a doctor; tell me, what does wetting the bed have to do with my mental health?"

"MacDonald triad."

"Come again?" He wasn't unfamiliar with psychology; if he were being honest—_so _boring—the Joker knew the significance of every question he'd been asked. But talking about psychiatric practices made Jonathan look less like he was bleeding out, and if the conversation was going to continue without intervention, then he needed to get the Scarecrow's heart rate down.

"The triad of sociopathy." The tension was fading from his posture, and Leland removed her hand from his shoulder, although she remained standing behind his chair. "Characteristics displayed in childhood that are associated with sociopathic behavior. Those being bedwetting past the age of five, animal cruelty, and fire setting."

It was almost cute, how self-important he sounded now when he'd been in the throes of a panic attack less than sixty seconds ago. Almost certainly a defense mechanism, but that didn't stop it from being comedy gold. "And why those three?"

"Persistent enuresis may indicate parental neglect, leading to emotional trauma, and whether or not that's the case, it's humiliating and can lead to fire setting or animal cruelty as an outlet for frustration. Starting fires is a destructive way to release aggression, as is cruelty to animals, which is also an indicator for homicidal behavior in the future."

"Ah." He licked his lips again. The skin there was irritated and peeling, though Ruth had yet to notice. He wondered if they'd crack and bleed before the abuse from his tongue became obvious. That was how low the isolated hours in the cell had brought him; he was contemplating self-injury, however mild, to break up the monotony. It had been one thing to scratch himself unwittingly. Premeditating it turned his stomach.

The Jonathan visits needed to continue, before the Joker had the chance to gain a new set of scars with a humiliating, idiotic origin.

"Did you?" Crane was watching him, most of the color back to his face.

"Did I what?"

"Meet the characteristics for the MacDonald triad."

The Joker didn't like the way Jonathan was watching him. Behind the glasses, there was a new look to his eyes. It wasn't predatory, but there was something off about it. Something detached, clinical. As if he was watching a bug under glass. As if the Joker was something to be studied.

He didn't like that. Not at all. "Did you?"

All of the color was back in Jonathan's face, and then some.

"Joker." Ruth's file was in her lap. So much for giving the patients the illusion of control.

"Hey, he asked me first."

Without saying a word, Ruth asked if he wanted to lose the chance to ever speak with Jonathan again. Did nobody in this building have a sense of humor?

"You know, doc, I just had a brilliant idea."

"And what would that be?" Jonathan wasn't looking at him anymore, like an angry child. Did he act that way in his sessions? Because that would be hilarious.

"We won't, uh, discuss each other's psycho_log_ical issues."

"Agreed."

There followed an awkward pause in which the Joker tried to think of something to discuss that wouldn't lead to disciplinary action or the silent treatment, and Jonathan, judging from the look on his face and the way he was just barely mouthing words again, forgot what they'd agreed to and had to remind himself. If this conversation was anything to go by, that happened a lot.

"Hey, you're not confined to a cell, are you?"

Jonathan shook his head.

"What's the rec room in this place like? Or the other patients?"

"Shoddy and irritating." He looked pained just thinking of it.

"And, uh, which is which?"

Jonathan shrugged. "Both for each."

Misanthropy was never so amusing. "Sounds like fun."

The former psychiatrist had enough self-preservation to keep from asking "Are you mad?" aloud, though they both knew he was thinking it.

"Jonathan?" Leland's hand was on his shoulder again, and he twitched under it at the contact. "We have to leave for your session."

"That goes for you as well." Ruth was standing, sliding papers into his file.

_All good things must come to an end. _The orderlies closed in around him, one bending to undo the ankle cuffs as on the opposite end of the table, Jonathan stood. "_Adieu, __épouvantail_."

"_Au revoir, clown_," Jonathan Crane muttered, as Leland led him out the door.

"Can I see him again?"

Ruth held her breath and slowly released it. "You called him a puppy-kicking, bedwetting pyromaniac. And you almost made him cry."

"Right." He gave a short nod. "Can I see him again?"

Another sigh, but this time she didn't attempt to disguise it. "We'll see."

* * *

AN: The song in the quote: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=FwlOUAAyPQE Enjoy having it in your head all day, as I have. For added fun, imagine the song with the characters in the chapter and watch your brain explode.

Translations for the French: "_Comment allez-vous_?" "How are you?" _Bon après-midi_." "Good afternoon." "_Parlez-vous français, oui_?" "You speak French, yes?" "_Je parle un peu._" "I speak a little." "_Quel dommage._" "What a pity." "_Adieu, __épouvantail_." "Goodbye, scarecrow." "_Au revoir, clown_." "Goodbye, clown."

If you're thinking Jonathan seems too lucid here for the mess that he was in the last chapter, he's literally putting all the energy and sanity he has left into appearing normal. It means that much to him.

I don't see either Jonathan or Joker fitting into the MacDonald Triad, as I can't imagine the Joker having the cruelty to animals required (Jonathan, though, I could see hurting birds), and Jonathan doesn't strike me as the type to have a preoccupation with fire. I have no idea whether or not the Joker was a bed wetter, but considering that Jonathan was extremely bullied, abused, and stressed in childhood, I can easily see him having that problem.


	14. Who I Am

AN: When it rains, it pours. Or, in my case, when it snows, everything goes to hell. Last week was relatively fine despite my leaking snow boots, until Wednesday night, when Steve the laptop was hit with ad ware and life became much less pleasant. After trying all sorts of ways to install a spyware-removing program to the laptop, even in safe mode, nothing was working and my tech-savvy friend told me we'd have to reformat it. So we did, only it's still not working properly afterward, and the soonest I can get into campus tech support is this Wednesday. Luckily, my roommate has an extra laptop she's willing to let me use (I'm eternally grateful even if it is an IBM, and therefore old and slow as it gets), and my mom has the laptop I'm using to type this while I visit home. It's missing the "v" key, which is annoying, and it's Word 2003, which is very much killing my buzz, but I'll take what I can get. I meant to have a chapter out Thursday, but between writing a script and spending forty-five minutes ankle-deep in snow shoveling out my friend's car, it didn't take.

On the plus side, I did manage to find a great video before things went to the ninth level of the inferno, and everyone should go watch/rate/comment on it here: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=2k7Ff2H0SFw (If you don't understand why I've sent you to watch it, check the video information).

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Take me for who I am,

What I was meant to be."

—"Take Me or Leave Me," _Rent_

Well, Jonathan had spoken. At least there was that.

Unfortunately, much like the hypnosis incident this morning, speaking and progress remained two vastly unrelated words. Not that Joan hadn't been thrilled to hear Jonathan talking to the Joker, to witness the rationality and sanity that had held on in spite of the toxin. There were marks on her palms from her nails; she'd clenched her fists so tightly in order to resist the urge to take notes. Jonathan wasn't stable, far from it, but there was so much hidden under the surface that she'd never expected to reemerge.

But despite the effort he'd put into speaking, Joan would be hard-pressed to label the conversation itself beneficial. There might have been some catharsis in talking, but between the not-quite insults the patients had given each other and the Joker's unwitting reminder of Jonathan's trauma, Joan wouldn't be at all surprised if the excursion gave him a panic attack. Or a bad mood, at the least. She couldn't imagine that he'd gotten over his anger at being sedated, and now this.

The chances of any discussion—or even receptive body language—coming out of today's session was very, very low.

"Why did you let me speak to him?"

Joan's hand dropped from the file she'd been opening. Jonathan met her eyes—albeit with a gaze that tended to wander nearly as often as it made contact—from across the desk. He didn't repeat himself, though he tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, awaiting a response. It took her longer than it should have to give one.

He'd _spoken. _To say that Jonathan never spoke would be an exaggeration. He would; given enough coaxing, goading, or sedatives. But that speech would be in answer to a question or a statement, following someone else's words. He'd only spoken to her unprovoked twice that she could recall after his incarceration. The first had been this morning, to accuse her of drugging him. This was the second.

For the time being, Joan chose to set aside her misgivings about all she'd put Jonathan through today and take this new development as a very good sign. "The Joker's been here for over a month without any social interaction. We couldn't trust him in the rec room, but we couldn't keep him in isolation, either."

"His behavior hasn't warranted it?" Jonathan looked almost normal when he asked it. If not for the patient's uniform on his body in place of a suit, and the hair cut shorter than he'd worn it before disappearing into the Narrows, it might have been one of the conversations about their cases they'd had on lunch breaks.

Joan was surprised to find how much the memory hurt. And here she thought she'd adjusted as well as one could to counseling a former coworker. Apparently that only applied when he wasn't himself. "According to Ruth, he's always the way you saw him. Eccentric, not very well-mannered, but not out of control. He's only had minor infractions of the rules, and only a few."

"And you chose me to talk to him." It wasn't a question, but the anticipation of an answer hung between them.

She hesitated again, not out of surprise or nostalgia, but apprehension. There was something that bordered on danger in his tone, as there had been this morning. And if he didn't like her explanation, Joan didn't want to guess where that danger might lead. True, the orderlies were an intercom button's press away from handling any situation, but she didn't_ want _them to handle anything. For Jonathan, that could only make things worse. "Yes. He has a history of manipulative behavior, and we needed someone intelligent enough to hold his attention without being influenced."

"That isn't why you chose me." He didn't look interested anymore. He looked as though he'd remembered that, in his sessions, he was the slide under the microscope—how she hated that analogy, but couldn't seem to change it in his mind—and further recalled that he didn't like that in the slightest. "That might be why Arkham agreed to it, but that isn't why you chose me."

The part of her mind that still viewed this as a very good sign leapt with joy at the voluntary, eloquent conversation. It was, however, greatly overshadowed by her churning stomach and racing thoughts. _Be honest. If you alienate him any further, you won't get him back. _Joan had treated violent patients, criminally insane patients, sex offenders. None of them had frightened her as much as the thought of losing Jonathan. "Jonathan, I chose you because—"

"Because you wanted me to talk." His eyes didn't quite focus enough to be accusing, his voice was too soft to bite. The tenses of his body and repeated glances toward his sides indicated that he was following—or at least fearing—something that wasn't there, but without more knowledge of _what _he was seeing, which he wasn't about to give her, she couldn't prescribe to help it. Joan found that made the words sting all the more. "That's what you've been hoping to accomplish all day."

It wouldn't be at all helpful to point out that it had worked. And it would break what little trust remained between them—if there was any, and it wasn't just wishful thinking on her part—if she lied. "Yes, I have."

"Did you think I wouldn't realize?" His voice was sharper now; eyes almost entirely on her. Jonathan was giving their conversation the same focus he'd given the Joker's, but she doubted it was out of intellectual interest this time around. "Or did you presume that my mind became invalid when my doctorate did?"

"Jonathan, it's not like that." Joan pretended not to hear his following scoff. "I want you to be able to talk because I'm _worried._ You're—you were a psychiatrist. You ought to know that therapy can't make progress without discussion. I don't care who you have that discussion with. I just want you to have it."

"And you ought to know that I'm not interested in your progress." He said it as if it were something obscene. "I know how the game works, Joan. I used to play it, and I was better than anyone else here, yourself included. You're not going to fool me into believing you care any more than you'll fool me into believing this asylum is therapeutic. I know better."

Joan shouldn't have said it, and she knew it, but her frustration—at Jonathan, at the Batman, at the system, at herself—had boiled over and flooded past the breaking point. "If you're so insightful, you should be able to tell that I'm not lying. And intelligent as you are, you should realize that you'd be out of here much faster if you cared about progress. And that you can't make it without talking."

Jonathan didn't say anything.

* * *

"I'm not asking to know what _happened._" Ruth's lipstick wasn't the right shade of red. It was a dark, faded red, almost a brown. Blackberry, according to the label, but it bore little resemblance to any blackberry, or even black _raspberry,_ that the Joker had ever seen. It wasn't the right shade to be a red raspberry either.

Raspberry. What a weird word. Razz-berry. _Rasp_-berry, but no one ever pronounced it that way. What was the "p" lurking in the middle of the word for? The Joker didn't trust it.

Still, beggars couldn't be choosers—not without weapons or massive numbers, anyway—so he wound the tube and applied, haphazardly across his lips and scars. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the makeup until a part of it was back in his hands. It was like going barefoot in the winter; the exposed feet would go numb and cease to feel the pain, but the shoes would still be a welcome relief. Not a perfect metaphor, considering that thermal pain affected the Joker in the same unique, delicious way that all other pain did, but the best he could come up with while his mind was distracted by lipstick-induced euphoria. "I just wanna know the basics so I don't make 'im start sobbing again."

"He wasn't _sobbing._" Ruth had yet to look up, scrawling notes over her legal pad, presumably about his conversation with the straw man. "And that's confidential information, I can't give it to you without Jonathan's permission, which he certainly isn't going to—where did you get that?"

_Damn. _He'd wanted her to remain oblivious long enough for him to paint his eyes as well. Not the right color, but artists had to work with what they had, and in Arkham, what he had wasn't much. They had an art therapy program—at current it was a no-go, as it would involve being around other patients—and he'd spent many a night wondering if they'd consider using his face as a canvas a waste of their supplies. And also if the paint would be an eye irritant. It shouldn't be; that wouldn't be safe for a funny farm. "Get what?"

"Don't be cute with me."

"I'm just as God made me, ma'am."

"Give me that." And then she was prying it out of his hand, without so much as a please. His eye twitched. It was one thing to show no respect for the average basket case, but when one was dealing with a terrorist, sadomasochist clown, people ought to consider being a bit more tactful if they didn't want to be force fed their own, still-attached intestines. "When did you steal this?"

"Steal? You're accusing me of theft, Ruthie?" The corners of his mouth drew down as far as the scars would allow. "Nice to know how highly you think of me. It couldn't be that your purse fell over and spilled onto the floor. That would be ludicrous."

Ruth narrowed her eyes, turned back to the desk. And noted the purse lying sideways and a few other items strewn about the floor. The Joker decided to be tactful and not mention that he approved of her choice in tampons—Playtex absorbed the most blood—watching in silence as she replaced her belongings. "It's still stealing no matter where you found it."

She was wiping at the lipstick with a Kleenex, as if he was a leper. Well, that was just _rude. _His teeth weren't that bad, especially now that he was here, where the "brush twice a day" policy was one of the few rules actually enforced. The Joker had no issue with brushing his teeth; it was just that society placed too much emphasis on hygiene, as far as he was concerned. There were so many more pressing matters in the world.

"I was going to give it back." He licked his lips gingerly; the chaffing was greatly reduced, but now that he had it, he didn't want to wipe it off too quickly. "You know, Ruth, you're not bad looking."

Her shoulders went stiff, hands lowering. "Excuse me?"

"You're not bad looking. You shouldn't have to worry about keeping track of all your cos_me_tics. That's another thing society's too focused on. Appearances."

"You're concerned about society's obsession with appearance?"

Why did she always sound so incredulous when he gave her his opinions? That had to be impeding their progress. "I wouldn't say _concerned. _More, uh, mildly amused. Can you imagine how people would panic if someone, say, contaminated all their foundation and hairspray and all? They'd be as terrified of going out without their face on as they would of being poisoned."

Ruth shook her head; sat back down. "Is this what you've been thinking about when you're alone in your room?"

"Oh, that's one of many." He smacked his lips, loving the feel of the makeup between them. "I'm _most _proud of the fish one. See, I plan to patent these fish after I—"

"No one can copyright fish, Joker. They're a natural resource."

_Thanks, Ruthie. Why don't you go knock over a kid's sand castle while you're at it?_ The Joker scowled, crossing his arms.

"What about you?"

"I'm not gonna patent _myself_, Ruth. I don't worry about unauthorized reproductions; I'm one of a kind."

She shook her head. "I meant the cosmetics. You wear them. Aren't you being as focused on appearance as everyone else?"

Ruth was so cute when she thought she was being insightful. For her sake, he tried not to giggle. It didn't work, but at least he had tried. "No. No, no, no, Ruthie. I don't wear makeup to cover up flaws. I wear it to ac_cen_tuate what's inside. It's for _their _benefit, not mine."

"How is that?" The pen was back in her hand, paper back in the other, as though the incident with the lipstick had never happened. She was resilient; he had to give her that. About all the wrong, boring things, but it wasn't a bad trait in and of itself.

"People use makeup to hide things. Broken veins, wrinkles, freckles, and so on. They're trying to present an image that's younger, prettier, better than they are."

"Are you're not?"

"With me? I've put it all out in the open. The makeup _defines _me. It's as much a part of my face as the scars. Just as distinctive, just as beautiful."

Ruth wrote without her eyes leaving his. "Let's talk about that."

"My beauty?" He arched a brow. "Hate to break it to you, but even eloquent as I am, I think we'll run out of ad_jec_tives real quick."

"No." She gestured toward his face with the free hand. "The scars. Can we talk about your scars?"

Oh, could they _ever._

* * *

AN: "Take Me or Leave Me" is from the musical _Rent. _www. youtube. com/ watch?v=MlNzpl3vz5Y

The bit about Playtex tampons absorbing the most blood is an homage to the brilliant 4ofCups's fics.

The Joker's scheme with the makeup is another reference to the '89 movie, in which he does just that, though there it was for his own amusement rather than making a point (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=SgCbegtw0JM&feature=related).

There's a Batman comic "The Laughing Fish," later adapted into one of my favorite episodes of the cartoon, in which the Joker introduces his smile toxin to fish (it doesn't make them poisonous), planning to patent the fish and become rich off of their products. As Batman puts it, "Normal criminals usually have logical motives. But the Joker's insane schemes make sense to him alone." Said episode contains the amazing Joker Fish commercial, with some of the best Alfred snark of the entire series: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=9PI9HJ04c_U

I never realized how much I use the "v" key before this. Typing was so much easier with it. I feel like Paul Sheldon of _Misery_, minus the broken legs and crazy woman keeping me locked up.


	15. Believes to be True

AN: All right, which of you wonderful people put TDATNTAMS on the Batman fic recommendations page of TV Tropes (tvtropes. org/ pmwiki/ pmwiki. php/ FanficRecs/ Batman)? I honestly want to know, because that person is my new best friend. It's been my ambition to be linked on that page since I knew of its existence. Yes, I know I could have linked myself, but it's the principle of the thing. Today is now a good day, officially. Never mind that my computer still isn't working or that it's been snowing nonstop again (predicted seven inches today, and expected to continue through Wednesday). No, it's the best day ever.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, he also believes to be true."

—Demosthenes

Do you wanna know how I got these scars?

There's one job open to every man in Gotham City. Every last one. And a fair few women, provided they've got the spine for it. That's not a knock against your kind, Ruthie, just an observation. In my world, you see just about everything, but you see a _lot_ more Twinkies than muffins. Anyway, it doesn't matter how bad the economy gets, or how little experience you have. You've gotta know what you're doing, but if you don't, you get weeded out early on, and the job's open again. Organized crime's great that way. Sure, the health benefits aren't much, and you don't get sick days, but your job's secured as long as you can stay alive.

I was good at that.

I was also young, and, for all my in_tell_ect—compared to my associates, I was Da Vinci—a complete idiot. It doesn't matter how much death is around you, Ruth, how many guns are pointed in your face; when you're twenty and you've got XY chromosomes, you're invincible. I was just another stupid kid, but unlike _most_ stupid kids, I didn't dick around smuggling beers into a dorm room, or bag groceries, or whatever else ordinary people do. No, my work shifts were a _little _more macabre. Extortion, transporting illegal drugs and unlicensed weaponry, dumping bodies off the pier, all that fun stuff. I started at sixteen, when I decided I wasn't _quite_ cut out for the academic world, and over the years I'd worked my way up from utterly expendable bullet shield to still expendable but much more valued, right on the fringe of the inner circle. Considering my line of work, all was going well.

And, considering my line of work, I was in for a _rude _awakening.

The cops found out about one of our jobs. I don't know how; it wasn't incompetence on _my _part. Could have been a set up. I wasn't the only one on the edge of a promotion, and those others were absent that night, and almostas vicious as me. I'd had run-ins with the GPD before, but never without at least a few minutes' forewarning; time to find the nearest exit or vantage point. I was playing the odds, and this time my luck ran out.

Some_ idiot _started firing while the rest of us were searching for cover. We might have gotten away if not for that. Dumbass got his head blown off, so at least I had that as a conso_la_tion prize. I managed to hide between a dumpster and a wall, but I got antsy, and neither jail nor death was an appealing prospect. And like I said, I was a punk kid back then. I was cocky. So I blew my cover, started firing. I was to going to make them duck, run out the other side of the alley before they could catch up, and find a better hiding place from there. That was the _plan_, anyway, and I swore off plans after _that _fiasco.

I got off a few bullets, and then one of them hit another dumpster, and ricocheted, like a boomerang, straight back. At me. It got my cheek—if I hadn't turned a little from the recoil, I'd be six feet under—and went straight through the other side. Like a knife through hot butter. _This_ is why I prefer knives, incidentally.

I don't know how I got away. I really don't. I was blind from pain and losing enough blood to paint a _house_, but I got out. Adrenaline kicked in, maybe, or my unconscious mind released my inner Mongol warrior. And the fact that most everybody else had apparently decided to follow my lead and open fire might just _might _have had something to do with it.

I couldn't risk a hospital. When the cops are after you, walking into one's like standing on a street corner with a flashing neon "ARREST ME" sign. I got the stitches back alley, and, as you can tell, they're about as good at facial wounds as they are at kidney transplants. Not that I've tried the kidney transplants, and I'm a-okay with keeping it that way.

* * *

People think about juvenile hall like it's rehab. As if everybody sits around the campfire, singing Kumbaya and talking about their feelings. Even when it's used as a threat, you only ever hear cops or disgruntled teachers say it seriously. Everyone else views it as an incon_ven_ience, like an extra long detention you can't get out of. That's how _I _pictured it. And then my sister's ex emailed the entire senior class some very, shall we say, compromising pictures of her, and I slammed his head against about every locker in the west wing of the school.

Turns out, juvie's prison for beginners. Like Monopoly Junior, only without the luxury tax. Just like prison, it has the gangs. And just like prison, those gangs like to single out the pretty boys. You can probably tell, Ruthie, that I'm a pretty boy. Now, I fought the good fight. I evaded them for as long as I could, but all good things come to an end. They got me, beat me into submission, dragged me to where the guards either couldn't hear or didn't care, and undid their flies. I bit the first bastard, _hard._ I don't know if I bit it off. I do know that it wasn't _ever _going to function again. It took three of them to haul me away, and he was unconscious before they could.

And then I found out that, much like in prison, they had shivs.

* * *

Never open a bag of chips with a chainsaw.

* * *

Before I gained the per_spect_ive I have now, before I saw the world for what it was and decided there was _far _more entertainment to be had in laughing at how fucked up the world was than in altering my perception, I dabbled in the sort of substances the GPD sends their puppy dogs after. I say dabbled, but it was more than that. I was never an out and out _addict_; it hurt to go cold turkey, but it wasn't as if I needed hit after hit to keep myself functioning. I didn't even need one daily. It started with marijuana in freshman year, and went up from there.

That night, it was heroin. Not from my dealer; if it had been, it wouldn't have happened. Mine ensured quality. I don't know what hers ensured. Work for the mortician, if this was any indication. Heroin isn't my drug of choice—you can't _piss _when you're on it, Ruthie, it's awful—but she offered and it wasn't as if I had anything better to do. We split it with the razor, snorted. Neither of us shot it up. You start shooting up heroin, and it's only a matter of time until you're giving the maggots a good buzz.

It wasn't heroin. Well, it was, but that wasn't all. I don't know what it was mixed with—road tar, judging by the lingering scent—but whatever it was, it made for a _bad _trip. And that's an understatement. I'd taken heavier drugs; ketamine, LSD, methylamphetamine, enough to handle the shock to the system. She hadn't. She was asthmatic. You can guess where this is going, right?

She was already on the ground by the time I'd realized what was happening. I couldn't find the inhaler. I never went back to look, once it was all over. It could have been right beside her the whole time. In that state, I wouldn't have seen it. I tried screaming for help. I couldn't hear my own voice, not over the sound of her struggling to breathe. I swear it filled the room. It was _deafening_, drowning me out, and I still couldn't find the inhaler.

But I did find the razor, and in that fine mental condition, I got the idea that if my mouth opened _wider_, the sound would be amplified. That first cut went smoothly. By the second one, the pain kicked in.

* * *

Hard to believe, I know, but I wasn't always out to show the world the joys of anarchy. Before I woke up, I was like any other clueless high school graduate. Struggling to pay my way through college, trying to find a job that _didn't_ make me feel comatose. Trying to find a purpose in life. Trying to find a person to share that life with.

We had a math class together. You know that stereotype that women can't do math? Bullshit. They'd never met her. She never missed a problem. Not one. I'd know; I sat next to her. I was decent. Nowhere near her level. And nowhere near worthy of someone so beautiful. It's _not _an exaggeration when I say she was the prettiest girl I'd ever laid eyes on, Ruthie. Well, one day, she looked at me. Looked at _me. _And smiled. Asked if we could study together. I knew she didn't need to; she knew all the answers. I think my heart stopped for a good thirty seconds when I realized what she was asking. I didn't think to question my luck.

Much as I never thought to question why we only met at my place. And why she took calls from her mother so often, always in the bathroom, even if it meant getting out of bed. She said she lived in the Narrows and her mother was paranoid that she'd be hurt. She _did _live in the Narrows. But the mother? Was a boyfriend, as I'm sure you've worked out, a gang member. And calling him possessive doesn't cover _half _of it. Not that she told me any of this, even when he found out. My only clue was the black eye she had in class one day and her tearful explanation that she couldn't come over that night. Or any night.

I didn't know the full story until he and his buddies jumped me.

They did it in the back of a van. It was burgundy, on the inside. Every detail, every stain, every tear in the upholstery is etched into my memory. I can see it every time I close my eyes. They tied my hands and held my head in place while he got the boxcutter. I could still thrash—see how this one's crooked?—but they shoved a credit card in my mouth to keep it open. Mastercard. I remember the blood splatter on that damn card perfectly. It's why I only ever use cash. They punched me in the stomach once they'd done it, they all did; made me scream. My face ripped in half from the movement and I passed out, either from pain or blood loss or both.

I stopped dating after that.

* * *

Honestly? There's no big secret. I'm bad at breaking the ice, so I put 'em there to give me something to talk about. Works every time.

* * *

Mommy didn't speak English.

Let me rephrase; she didn't speak it _fluently. _She knew all the basic phrases—please, thank you, good morning—she knew yes and no, and a few other phrases like "toilet." She could read picture books in the language, provided they were intended for toddlers, but not much else. She did know that American kids called their mother "mommy," though, so that's what I called her. _Mommy_, not Mutti. In German, she would have been Mutti, and German was the language we spoke.

It was me, and Mommy, and the house. Opa—she didn't know "grandpa"—paid for the house, because Mommy didn't have a job. She couldn't have a job. She never left the house. Neither of us did. It wasn't safe out there, Mommy said, and sometimes she'd turn on what she called the news, make me watch to show me what we had to hide from. She taught me the words "murder," "robbery," and "rape," so I could hear for myself. I tried to hide from the news the way we hid from outside, but she'd pull me out from under the bed.

I don't know if Opa and Oma spoke English. They only spoke German to Mommy, and they only spoke it through the door every week when they dropped off food. I never saw them, because we kept the windows covered to keep the bad things out. They never came in. Mommy said it was because they didn't like Daddy, and they had hated her job, hated that she had a baby when she wasn't married. I'd never met Daddy, either. He did speak English. Mommy said he was a businessman, wealthy, important. He didn't live with us.

It was just me and Mommy, and I never needed anyone else. She taught me shapes, numbers, colors, both alphabets. I knew pluses and minuses, and the times table and long division. She said that was amazing, for a four year old, said I was a genius like my daddy. She taught me what English she knew, and how to read in both languages. We didn't have many books. Our favorite was the one about the bad children. I liked the story in that book about the matches. She liked the one about the boy with the umbrella. _Bleiben Mädchen oder Buben Hübsch daheim in Ihren Stuben_. It was the one she read most often, so I would understand the terrible things that happened if I left the house.

Mommy had more shoes than books. A hundred and five pairs—I could count that high—some sneakers, some sandals. Most of them had high heels. She said they were for dancing, or night clubs, or fancy restaurants; all the places Daddy would take her when he wasn't so busy. It would be safe outside, she said, with him to protect us. Sometimes she'd put on her favorite pair—purple—and her matching dress, and makeup, and pretend that we had all those things in the house. She taught me how to dance that way. It didn't work, not really, because I was too short, but she told me I was wonderful, even when I took the wrong steps.

There was one telephone in the house. That was the only thing in the house I couldn't touch, besides the TV. Mommy said if anybody knew I was living here, they would try to take me away, make me go outside. She used it to tell Opa and Oma when we needed things. Sometimes, she called Daddy. And sometimes, after she did, she would dress up and he would come to the house.

I had to hide in the closet when she let him inside. Daddy didn't know about me either, she said, he couldn't know about me until he decided to marry her, or he'd take me away. We had to hide my things. I had to sit in the dark without making a sound until he went away, and I was good at it. Even if I was hungry, or thirsty, or needed the bathroom. Even if he was inside for a long time. Sometimes they shouted. Sometimes I could hear her screaming in the bedroom and she would have scratches deep in her back after he left. But she told me to hide, so I couldn't stop it. The dark scared me, made me think of outside and being taken from Mommy and all the other bad things, and sometimes it made me cry, but I didn't make a sound.

The last time he visited, Mommy was yelling. I heard things break against the floor. I found out later they were plates. She slammed the door behind him and I couldn't make her stop crying. She said he didn't love us after all, that he had married without telling her, wanted to break things off. That we would be stuck here forever because he didn't care, he didn't want a whore who was afraid to go out and couldn't speak to anyone. She went into the kitchen, broke all the glasses. Then she went to the bedroom, and wouldn't get out of bed for days. Then she did move, one morning before I got up. When I brought her breakfast, she wasn't in bed. I found her lying in the bathtub. The water was pink. There was a knife lying on the side of the tub by her shampoo. She felt cold, so I let the water out, brought her a towel. She didn't move or talk, even when I lay down beside her.

Later that week, Oma brought us food. I told her through the door that Mommy hadn't been up in days, that there was a bad smell and she might be sick. Oma came in for the first time, so fast that the door knocked me over, ran to the bathroom. She took one look inside and started screaming.

They sent me to live with my father after that.

My mother had been right half right in calling him important. He had political aspirations; might have it past county positions if it hadn't been for me. He and my stepmother took me in to try and lessen the damage. My grandparents wouldn't have me because I was illegitimate, and my father didn't want to acknowledge that he'd been with a mentally unstable, foreign former prostitute. But my mother's parents threatened to inform the press of his visits to my mother after his marriage, so he had no choice.

They hated me. I'd ruined my father's career, my step-mother's illusion of a perfect marriage. His children were forever associated with that weird kid who didn't talk right. I learned to speak English. I never learned to fit in, or to forgive him for my mother's suicide. And there was no solace with my grandparents, who'd made her hide her pregnancy by staying inside in the first place, given her the phobia. It was their fault my mother had been confined and his fault my happiness was taken. I ran away at fifteen.

Good luck finding records of _that_ little scandal; I crossed more than a few states in my journey to fair Gotham City. It wasn't until I stopped here that I found my place, in just the sort of profession that gave Mommy panic attacks. Funny, how life works out. I started out as a minnow in the stream, like all criminals do. Everyone does, but I made the mistake of pissing off a few of the bigger fish. I was ambitious. Like father, like son, and both got bit in the ass for it.

You know what I thought of, when they cut me open? _Bleiben Mädchen oder Buben Hübsch daheim in Ihren Stuben_.

I don't think Mommy'd be proud of my line of work, but I'd like to think we'd have _some _common ground, unlike she did with her parents. We had a good relationship, as good as it could have been in such a situation. If she wasn't dearly departed, we could probably have a civil conversation, though it would be through a door. We both love purple, for example, and we're both good at bloodletting with knives.

* * *

I forgot my safeword.

* * *

The skin on your face is _tight. _It's not something you think about, because your mouth moves easily enough to talk and eat and fellate and all that. But it is. It's tight. Unless you're built like a whale, it's just musculature and skin, and musculature isn't loose. So when you slice through it, it's like snapping a rubber band. It folds back, almost like origami, except instead of a swan or a little jumping frog you get disfigurement—

Fireworks. It was like watching fireworks. I didn't shut my eyes, I was too shocked to shut my eyes, even when they started sawing back and forth, but I saw fireworks. Those sparks you see when something really hurts? They don't come from wrenching your eyes too tightly shut. It just happens. I think it's your senses overloading, because your nerves are too busy burning to properly—

_Mon dieu __arrêtez arrêtez arrêtez s'il vous plaît arrêtez—_

The blood spilled back in, not out. It went down my throat. I was gagging on it, couldn't spit it out because my cheeks couldn't move that way—

I could feel flaps of skin hitting against my teeth, my tongue—

And I screamed and when I screamed it tore, and it sounded like fabric ripping, only wet, and— My fingers were covered with blood and the razor slipped—

Trying to keep the needle as steady as possible, but I could tell it wouldn't stitch properly—

Choking—

Screaming—

Bleeding—

Ripping—

Do you wanna know how I got these scars?

* * *

AN: Yes, "never open a bag of chips with a chainsaw" is an homage to That Guy with the Glasses and his "Joker practices his origin story" video.

Were any of those true? No idea. Incidentally, this chapter is actually the reason this fic exists. Not the stories, but the idea in general. I had the thought of a lot of scar stories told at once before I had the plot for TDATNTAMS.

Credit cards are commonly used in real life while inflicting Chelsea grins.

_Bleiben Mädchen oder Buben Hübsch daheim in Ihren Stuben_ is roughly "good girls and boys remain in your rooms at home." It's from another _Stuwwelpeter _story, Flying Robert, about a boy who goes out in the rain with an umbrella and is blown away forever.

_Mon dieu __arrêtez arrêtez arrêtez s'il vous plaît arrêtez _is French for "My God stop stop stop please stop."


	16. Truth and Consequence

AN: I don't know why all my classes started piling on the assignments three weeks before midterms, but that's why I was missing for all of last week. I'd like to say the worst is behind me, but I still have a Latin test and two essays—if I never hear the words "The Tempest" again it'll be too soon, and I actually liked the play before I had to analyze it—before the week of freedom. So chances are I'll have to make another disappearance before it's said and done.

In other news, how is it that Cillian Murphy made a film all the way back in 2001 in which he played a sweater-wearing mental patient named Jonathan and I just now found out about it?

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"And with a wink he says, "I doubt we would be anywhere without

Your gift for keeping truth and consequence from meeting."

—"Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner," The Dresden Dolls

Ruth's pen wasn't poised over her notepad, where it would be found during any other session. She moved her hand to write—what she'd put down, she had no idea, but she had to write _something_—and found that it wasn't even in her hand. She looked away from the Joker for the first time since he'd started speaking, confused, and found it lying on her desk, against his file. She didn't remember setting it down.

_Where do I even begin?_

She should have known that the Joker wouldn't give anything close to a straight answer; not about something so personal. He was misleading enough when it came to informal discussions. Hell, the only times he'd been straightforward in his speech were the occasions when he complained about either boredom or his dissatisfaction with Arkham's regulations. And she'd expected him to be remotely trustworthy about what must have been a traumatic experience?

_But I didn't expect that. _Not really. She'd been suspicious from the start; before he'd contradicted his first story seconds after recounting it. It hadn't been unbelievable at the beginning; a personality like the Joker's didn't develop overnight, not in any case she'd studied, and a criminal career before he got into theatrics was highly plausible. Still, a patient so resistant to discussing the past becoming so suddenly talkative aroused her suspicion at once, though she'd tried to keep an open mind. It wasn't until he'd mentioned the ricocheting bullet that she called bullshit. It wasn't impossible, but the scar on his right cheek was much too smooth of a cut to make the story likely. True, the bullet could have nicked the edge of his mouth, the cut tearing wider along the curve of his cheek if he screamed, but there was no jagged point to indicate an exit wound. Possible, but extremely unlikely.

She'd intended to ask him about it once he'd finished—lying or not, he'd gotten emotionally involved in the telling, and Ruth didn't want to jar him by breaking his train of thought—but she hadn't had time to get the words out before the next story started. And the next. And by the time she'd worked through the confusion of just what he was doing, she was too dumbstruck to interrupt.

It wasn't just the speed of the transitions; one story ending and another starting with the very next breath. That would have been striking by itself. The Joker hadn't stopped to think, not even once. If he was making things up, he either had the most active imagination Ruth had ever encountered or he had far too much free time. Granted, he _did _spend the majority of his days locked in a padded cell with nothing to occupy his attention, but in spite of that, and in spite of his skills in manipulation, Ruth didn't think that was the case.

If The Joker was lying, he was the best liar she'd ever seen.

He didn't look as if he was recalling something he'd memorized. He didn't look as if he was remembering either. The short, ridiculous lines about chainsaws, ice breakers, and safewords had been bluntly stated, but for every other story, the Joker looked as though he was _reliving _the events while he spoke. Like a patient with post traumatic stress disorder suffering a flashback. He'd radiated anger, frustration, longing, concern, even fear. _The Joker_ had expressed fear that was, as far as Ruth could discern, genuine. His face had contorted as far as his disfigurement would allow it as he recounted the sensations of the cuts, his eyes had glistened with tears that never spilled, and his hands moved upward to cover his face, as if to protect it from injuries long since scarred over. When he'd spoken of his mother, his voice had changed, slightly rising in pitch and giving the faintest hint of an accent, and when he talked about feeling his face rip open, he'd gone as white as he was with his makeup on, as if from blood loss.

If that was acting, it beat any professional performance in the history of theater.

"Joker?"

He raised his head, brushing his hair away from his eyes. His hand was just barely trembling, his face a few shades paler than normal. His mouth twitched, as though he'd thought of speaking or smiling and decided against it. "Eh?"

Ruth considered. Her mind was still at a blank for something to ask. "Are you all right?"

"Fine."

It was a lie; the first in the session that she could be sure of. For once, he was affected by their discussion, and he wasn't handling it well at all. She couldn't think of how to help him. It was easy to reassure other patients; it shouldn't have been so difficult with him. He was as human as anyone else, under the scarring and the dramatics, but the knowledge didn't make him any easier to speak to, much as hearing all his explanations didn't bring her closer to knowing the truth. "Joker?"

"Yeah?"

No. It wasn't as if asking "Was any of that true?" would receive a helpful answer—given his reactions, she wasn't sure if he even _knew_—and even if it would, she doubted he'd be receptive to talking about it while he was visibly shaken. Better if she gave him time to relax, but taking him back to the cell, unsupervised, with his habit of self-mutilation in stress would be as bad of an idea as pressing him for information. "I—do you want to rest in the infirmary for the remainder of the session?"

The Joker smiled, and it seemed genuine, if weak.

* * *

"Stop unbuttoning your shirt."

Teresa didn't swat his hand away, though she did remain next to him, hands on her hips and her best attempt at an intimidating look on her face until the nearest gorilla in an orderly's uniform pulled the Joker's arm down for her. Well, _that _was nice. Nothing made him feel more appreciated than being treated like a leper.

"I can't breathe." All right, so that was just a bit hyperbolic; obviously he could, or he'd have suffocated back in Ruthie's office, but no matter how deep his breaths, it didn't feel as if anything was reaching his lungs. An annoying little something—not quite clear enough to be defined as a voice—in the back of his mind that usually only showed up when he got himself shot at told him that he shouldn't have carried on so much. He hadn't _planned _on it. It had just happened, and he'd been as much of a passive observer as poor bewildered Ruthie.

Not even Ruth's range of expressions throughout the session made up for the not-getting-enough-oxygen-in feeling.

"You're breathing right now." Teresa was standing a good three feet away from his cot, though she wasn't standing as if poised to run; her usual posture the last time he'd been in the infirmary with her. She'd become more forceful in stance and posture; not exactly the no nonsense attitudes of Linda and Ruth, but stern. Like a pet owner shouting orders at a dog gone wild. Fighting for authority, but hesitant, and fully prepared to head for the hills should the going get threatening. He wondered where their relationship would be if he'd keep up the daily infirmary visits, much as he wondered how easy it would be to make her faint.

The Joker rolled his eyes, tried leaning forward to reduce the sensation of pressure on his chest. It didn't help. "Thank God for your nursing degree. I'd _never _have known without it."

Teresa opened her mouth and closed it again without speaking. He imagined he'd be in for a scolding if he wasn't so scary. "I thought you weren't allowed out of your cell without a straitjacket."

"Ruthie made an ex_cep_tion." Not that they hadn't _tried _to strap him up. Some patients found the restriction comforting, the confines reassuring. Those were the _real_ sickos. He hated any restraint that didn't come with a safeword and an assortment of toys. They highlighted his imprisonment and made that record-at-the-wrong-speed feeling impossible to ignore. Normally, he could tolerate them, but normally, his mind didn't go into a downward spiral of bad memories that he couldn't control, and Ruth hadn't made them force him into the jacket when he resisted.

Remembering his past was like adjusting the antennae on an old, barely functioning television. It was mostly static, with a few clear pictures thrown in the mix, so short and out of focus that it wasn't worth the effort. Sometimes he'd get a comprehensible scene; usually about the scars. He couldn't remember the last time he'd happened upon an abstract film made up of nightmarish images as he had Ruth's office. When that happened, he sent the event to the static with everything else, and was left with nothing but the memory of how greatly he disliked it.

Only it wouldn't fade until he calmed down, and that didn't seem to be happening any time soon. Oddly enough, the compassionate staff wasn't much improving the situation.

"Oh," said Teresa, only by "oh" she meant "if I were Ruth I'd have you sedated and put back in your cell, not brought here to make my job difficult." She was great at playing hard to get.

The Joker grabbed the bottom of his uniform shirt and pulled it up, making a concentrated effort to breathe from the diaphragm. Usually, he did that without thought. Usually, he wasn't locked in an asylum so painfully boring that it was starting to interfere with his perception of reality.

Teresa averted her eyes. "Joker."

"What? The shirt's still on." He couldn't help it if his body was as scarred as his face. Well, that wasn't entirely true; many of them—that he could recall the origins of—could technically be called his fault, given his tendency to put himself in dangerous situations, but life would be even more black and white and boring if he didn't do something to spice it up. Besides, they weren't _ugly s_cars. There was one right over his appendix that would have served as a map of Gotham's red light district, except that—oh. _Maybe it's the bruising she objects to_, he decided, upon glancing down at his body.

At this point, it'd be a challenge to find skin that _wasn't_ black or blue under his Arkham wear. Well, there were a few areas—there was one over his pancreas that was shaped like a badly-knitted sock—but those were all yellowed from earlier damage. He could see why the sight of it turned Teresa's stomach.

Though he couldn't help but think it would help both of their stomachs if she actually bothered to report it. Oh well. Humanity excelled at nothing better than the path of least resistance.

"That's not the point. You can't—Thomas, how did you get in here?"

He heard the voice before he turned. "Hello, Joker."

"Schiff?" He barely had time to note that the suffocating feeling had disappeared before his eyes focused on the figure behind the nurses' desk that he hadn't seen there when he came in. It _was _Thomas Schiff, and the carrot-orange uniforms suited him as badly as everyone else. He'd cut a much better figure in the police uniform. "Long time no see, kid. They brought you back to Arkham, huh?"

He nodded. "Dr. Crane said he talked to you."

"You know the Scarecrow?"

Schiff nodded again, without further explanation. He'd always been more eyes and ears than voice, though the Joker wasn't sure if that was his natural demeanor or a by-product of delusions.

_Huh. _So the city's other costumed criminal was allowed access to the easily persuaded nut jobs. That hardly seemed fair.

"Thomas." Teresa stepped between them. As though that would do anything to lessen his influence over his unbalanced henchman. The Joker noticed that she sounded like a disapproving mother when she spoke to Schiff, and she stood much closer. "How did you get in here?"

Wordless, he pointed to the infirmary's open door.

She crossed her arms. "And where's Jacob? You know you're not allowed to walk around without an escort."

He shrugged. "He got lost."

"Or you wandered off. You can't keep sneaking in here, Thomas." She glanced at the cabinets over his shoulder. "Did you get into the medications?"

"It's locked." He tugged on a handle to illustrate his point. "They don't want to get out."

As usual, the Joker's attempt to stifle his giggles failed spectacularly. Yeah, the system was doing so much to bring this one back to sanity.

"Joker, quiet. Thomas, you have to stop this. You know you'll lose your privileges if you keep breaking the rules."

_And yet_, he thought, watching as Teresa took Schiff's hand to lead him out, _I'd bet all the mob's money that those consequences are never going to apply. _

* * *

Jonathan was alone in the hallway, and he wasn't sure how that had happened.

It shouldn't have; as muddied and circular as his thoughts were these days, Jonathan remembered Arkham procedure and the rule about mandatory escorts for high security patients had been right at the top, or close to it. The rules were there, but the order was jumbled, and now that he thought about it, there might have been a few things before that one, about parking spaces and lunch breaks and maybe a few others, but the escort bit had been up there, probably. Important or not, he found himself in a state of aloneness the he was fairly certain the administration would have frowned upon, were they there to witness it, but they weren't, and if they had been, he wouldn't be unescorted, which made the hypothetical situation rather pointless.

He'd had Joan with him, hadn't he? No, it had been an orderly. The session had been with Joan, and they'd spoken, more than they'd spoken in any session up to that point. Maybe. It was hard enough to separate his thoughts from his words when he spoke; in memory, it was all but impossible. They'd wound together into a single thread, and while he could tear apart the fibers if he tried, it took more effort than his mind or his attention span was willing to put forth. But he'd spoken this time, he knew, because he'd been surprised to find how much focus anger gave him. It had almost seemed a viable method of regaining his mind until he remembered the ulcers and high blood pressure and coronaries and all the other things anger could do to the body.

Anyway, it was hard to maintain anger when his thoughts leapt from things like who'd been escorting him to how his mind stored his conversations to how much he hated the color of the uniforms—they were sickeningly orange, like a pumpkin, a jack-o-lantern, but they'd never had jack-o-lanterns growing up because Halloween was just the Devil's night disguising itself as a Christian holiday and asking to go out on it is inviting Satan into your soul, boy—so fury unto sanity wasn't likely to be fruitful.

It _had _been an orderly, Brooks, or Book, or something with a "b" at the start and a hard "k" at the end. Had names been this hard before the toxin? He couldn't see why fear would affect names; he'd never observed that in his studies. The orderly whose name was Brooks or Book or something like it was new, softer than the others, and they'd probably assigned Jonathan to him for that reason, because Jonathan's luck was never that good. They'd been walking—to his cell? The cafeteria? Locations were as hard as names—and they'd stopped, because Thomas and his orderly and been around the corner, and while the orderlies were discussing something—sports, a movie, violating patients—Jonathan had spoken to Thomas, because Thomas was persistent, and anyway, they had to talk sometimes, much as he hated speaking aloud these days, because nothing would work if he didn't. And then Thomas had been gone and Jonathan, confused, had wandered off after him and found himself alone in the hall.

The walls seemed to shiver, as if the ceiling would fall in and asphyxiate him at any moment. Or crush him. Whichever came first. They said to stay still when lost, but Arkham had been winding and confusing even before the seams of his mind had unraveled, and he doubted anyone would find him here, so he kept walking.

Jonathan smelled the nicotine before he saw the source.

He didn't notice until it was too late to get away because there had been sounds from the vent and he'd been too worried about birds to notice the footsteps. And then the smell of cigarettes had filled the air, filled his lungs, made it impossible to breathe or scream or run, and it came around the corner, sliding a pack of cigarettes into the pocket of its uniform.

They also said that animals wouldn't attack if one held still, might not even notice the potential prey. That wasn't true, either. It smiled at him, wide, pointed teeth set in a face that looked human but couldn't be, because he'd stopped letting people have power over him when he'd left Georgia and become the Scarecrow that only bats and monsters could harm. "Crane."

Jonathan could feel his heart hammering in his chest, but he couldn't hear it over the sound from the air vents, no longer birdlike, but lemon screeching, like a cooking show with sharp knives on human flesh, like the sounds his body had made when it tore open.

"Jonathan." There was a hand on his shoulder, but he couldn't jump, couldn't scream, couldn't move anything except his eyes to see that it was his orderly touching him, his orderly that didn't have eyes like burning coals or breath that reeked of poison, that didn't hold patients down and make their bodies burn like fire. "Don't wander off like that."

"Brooks," it said, walking past. The air where it had walked was darkened, contaminated. Jonathan imagined it would rot the lungs, were he to breathe it in.

"Lotter." He took Jonathan's other shoulder, steered him around. He could move now. He didn't want to. "Come on, let's go."

Jonathan didn't say anything and let himself be led, eyes closed as he walked. He didn't want to see the darkness that it had left behind, didn't want to see the walls contort around him. The sounds he couldn't block out, birds again, but despite the way their noises turned his stomach, he preferred it to the alternative.

* * *

AN: There are live performances of "Lonesome Organist Rapes the Page-Turner" on Youtube if you prefer to see the performers, but I'm linking a lyrics-only version because it has superior sound quality: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=X6pucEHFhEI

While writing this chapter, I checked my email and found that I'd received a screenplay written by two of my classmates that we all have to critique on Wednesday. The assignment was to take a short story and adapt it into a short film. The script in the email took Hemingway's "The Killers," about two assassins hired to kill an old man, and turned it into a story about the Joker hiring Scarecrow and Two-Face to kill an Arkham doctor. I am not making this up. Forget my author's note at the top, this is the best week ever.


	17. That I Might Reach You

AN: So I finally read that comic in which the Scarecrow and Hugo Strange are working together, and I've got a question for anyone who's more familiar with Strange in the comics: Does he make a habit of dressing up female mannequins as Batman and then being…intimate with them? Because that is, without a doubt, the most randomly disturbing thing I've ever read in any comic ever. And this is coming from a fan of _Johnny the Homicidal Maniac _and _Arkham Arkham: A Serious House on Serious Earth._

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

""Hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you."

But my words like silent raindrops fell and echoed in the wells of silence."

—"The Sound of Silence," Simon and Garfunkel

His tooth was chipped.

The damage was mild; it hadn't cracked far enough to reach the pulp. Nor had the impact carried enough force to loosen the tooth. It was a tiny imperfection—it would have to be tiny, given that it was one of his front teeth and Ruthie hadn't noticed—just the smallest sliver gone from the enamel. But against the Joker's tongue, which he'd been running over the damage all day, the smallest sliver seemed as subtle as his scarring.

"Do I get to see the Scarecrow again?"

Ruth flicked the ash of her cigarette to the grass, snuffing it out with her shoe. Gilda was in the parking lot today, weaving between the cars and wagging her tail at him from across the distance. Her coat was still begging for a brush and a flea bath, but it was striking, the difference that adding a few pounds made. He doubted he'd be able to feel her ribs anymore, if he could pet her. Well, brush up against her. It was the same principle, just with the added canvas fabric and straps barring his hands. "Do you feel all right?"

"Take it that's a no."

"I'm serious." She leaned forward, brows creased in something not yet involved enough to be truly worried. "You're hoarse."

"I decided to take up ventriloquism. Not that easy without a how-to guide."

It wasn't the chipped tooth that bothered him. The scars hadn't detracted from his looks—rather, they'd enhanced them—and a bit of missing enamel didn't worry him. No, it was the principle of the thing. The scars on his cheek from the Bat-armor were a badge of pride. A battle wound from his Bat, and a reminder of their contact. Those scars defined him as much as the ones running across his mouth. Some people had scrapbooks. He had his scars.

And if there was one thing he _didn't _want to keep and cherish forever, it was the memory that Hadley had knocked him over in such a way that he'd landed mouth-first on Ellis's boot and lost a piece of his tooth in the process. Who chipped their tooth on a _boot_, for Christ's sake? Even if it was steel-toed. It was infuriating. It was humiliating. It was beneath him.

There was no question that Hadley had to die. It was only a matter of when, with what, and how slowly. And whether or not he should do it in front of a mirror so the bastard could see the damage. That always made for hilarious facial expressions, but people tended to pass out pretty quickly after having their spleens waved around in their faces. As if they cared about their spleens at any other point in their lives, the hypocrites.

"Really, Joker. Are you all right?"

"_Really_, ventriloquism isn't easy."

Ruth tightened her jaw, taking twice as long to exhale the smoke as she usually did.

_Don't ask for the truth if you don't like it, lady. _"So, do I get to see him again or not?"

"Not until next week. And that depends on whether or not you behave, and whether or not Jonathan wants to."

Considering that good behavior had earned him virtually nothing in his stay here, and considering how turbulent the waters of the Scarecrow's mind had seemed under his icy façade, it was anybody's guess. "Ruthie?"

"Yes?" She'd stopped faintly scowling every time he used her nickname, at least. That had to be a good sign.

He lay back on the grass, making an effort to keep his tongue away from his teeth. It was starting to go raw from constant friction. The sky was gray today. Standard fare for the Gotham forecast, but the Joker couldn't help but think that sky over Arkham was grayer than the sky over any other part of the city he'd been to. The air here leeched the color out of everything. Where it went after that, he wasn't sure. Into the pills, maybe. They always looked brightly colored on the commercials. "What're you gonna tell them about me when you go to court?"

She paused, crushing what remained of her cigarette against the wall of the asylum. Something shifted in her shoulders, rendering her posture a little less immaculate. "I don't know."

He tilted his head back to watch her face. The grass tickled against his ears and what he could feel of his cheeks. "You've gotta have some idea."

"Nothing solid. Not yet. There's still over a month until your court date."

"And if you don't find anything by then? Do you just, uh, walk in empty-handed?" He imagined the sniveling, cowardly mess of a defense attorney the courts had appointed him trying to present that as a case. _Your honor, the defense has no idea. None. Couldn't find its ass with both hands and a flashlight, sir._ He _hoped _that was how it went; he hadn't had a good, hard laugh in a long time and there was nothing in the world more depressing than a sad clown. It would be for the betterment of humanity.

Then again, after he wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes, he'd probably end up at Blackgate, which would not be for the betterment of anybody.

"No. Your defense can drop the plea, or ask for a second opinion, or an extension."

"Would they give you one?"

Ruth shrugged. She was watching his face as he was watching hers, trying to analyze back. It was like watching a child step into her mother's heels and declared herself a grown-up, and, being a sentimental man, it brought a smile to his face. "It would help me to make a diagnosis if our sessions were more productive."

_How tactful_. The Joker didn't have a doctorate, but if he had to make an educated guess, he'd say that blaming the patient wasn't the way to go about curing mental illness. "I talk to you."

"I know that, Joker." She was either apologetic or just tired. From this angle, he couldn't tell.

"Have I ever shied away from a to_pic_?" He made the last syllable teasing, partly because that was how he spoke and partly to lessen the weight of their personal sword of Damocles. The scar session two days ago. It was the elephant in the room—in this case, the dog in the asylum grounds—and he was perfectly content to sit back and wait for her to snap from the effort of _not_ talking about it. He'd sent the images back to the static. He was just fine. But the memory lingered and since she'd introduced the topic of conversation, he was more than happy to watch her squirm as she'd watched him.

"No. You've also introduced more than a few in the middle of a conversation."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, for her sake. People and their need for a linear train of thought. How sad. "I'm giving you an in_sight_ into my mental state, aren't I?"

She was cleaning the nicotine from her fingers with sanitizer from her bag. The sanitizer was clear, with little blue beads of lotion or vitamins or something like it that managed to be brighter than anything inside of Arkham Asylum, expect maybe Jonathan's eyes. "That, or changing the subject."

The Joker pouted. "That hurts, Ruthie. Just stab me through the heart, why don't you?"

"Don't be so dramatic."

"Don't call me a liar."

"I'm not." She put the sanitizer back in her bag and knelt down beside him. "I just wish you'd stay in the direction you started instead of switching rails halfway through. It makes you harder to follow, and you're not exactly an open book."

"I'm _wide_ open." He allowed his tongue past his teeth to swipe at his lips, chapped again. "I'm just not at your reading level."

Ruth shook her head, but she didn't protest. Not out loud. "Then how about you try coming to my level and giving me the Cliffs Notes?"

"That's what I've been _trying _this whole time. Problem is, once you're so many standard deviations past the bell curve, it's not easy to bridge the gap. It's like, uh—" He bit his lip, thinking of a metaphor. "I'm speaking Shakespearean English, and you're doing Modern. Most of the words are the same, but the context is all off."

"I've read my fair share of Shakespeare." The Joker couldn't imagine that crouching that way was comfortable, but she made no move to sit in the grass. Avoiding stains on her skirt, perhaps. They ought to bring a chair out here. "I understood him."

"It's not a perfect metaphor." He shook his head, feeling the lawn move under it. He wondered if he could grass-stain his hair green again. Certainly, it was worth the effort. "It's like…a human trying to communicate with a god. They can talk back and forth, but they'll never really _speak._"

"You're saying that you're on a higher plane of existence than the rest of us?" Ruth asked it wryly, as if it amused her.

"Well, yeah."

She waited for him to smile, and started scribbling down notes when he failed to deliver. How she managed to write legibly crouched down like that, he'd never know.

* * *

Jonathan agreed to go under again.

In her time as a psychiatrist, Joan had dealt with many difficult things. Talking down suicidal patients who had managed to get their hands on pills or sharps, assessing sex offenders who had no qualms about sexual harassment or public masturbation, watching patients leave because the hospital had no room for them, not because they were cured. Persuading Jonathan to try again, convincing him that she wasn't going to drug him; it hadn't been the most difficult thing she'd done in her career.

But it was very high on the list.

She'd had to imply that he was frightened of it again, to convince him. That had only been part of the process, but it was the part that stung the most. Both the use of fear to persuade him, no matter how mildly it was used, and the fact that he was damaged enough for such an obvious ploy—especially to a former psychiatrist—to work against him. Maybe it wasn't so surprising considering the brain damage the MRI had found. Not as much as she'd feared but enough to make his relatively lucid conversation with the Joker all the more jaw-dropping.

They needed to adjust his medication again. Given the wonderful little landslide of side effects they'd had to wade through to arrive at the current chemical cocktail, she shuddered to think of repeating the cycle.

He'd had two conditions: first, that he was present when the nurses retrieved his medications, so he could ensure that nothing was put in that shouldn't be, and second, that they didn't ask about "that." Joan didn't need to ask for clarification. Jonathan wouldn't have provided it if she had.

And so they found themselves back in Hugo Strange's office, and found that Jonathan was able to go under hypnosis without or sedatives to aid the process.

Not that he hadn't resisted. Joan had never had much success at hypnosis—the hypnotist needed completely confidence to carry it off, and she'd never had enough faith in her own abilities to muster up that self-assurance—and as such hadn't given it extensive study, so she was never quite sure how the therapists managed to relax clients fighting the process into a trance. But Strange had, and she wasn't going to question it.

In this session, she wasn't going to question anything, despite reassurances that she could lead the conversation if she wanted. It had been a struggle to put Jonathan under in the first place and she didn't want to upset the delicate balance by phrasing things wrongly. At least this time, she was content to watch as someone else asked Jonathan about the nightmares.

"If you're uncomfortable, you don't have to speak." If Strange hadn't gone into therapy—and if he could suppress that accent Joan could never quite place—he'd have been perfect at recording audio-books. There were voices made for that sort of thing, and his was one of them. "But know that you are safe here and that nothing can harm you."

Jonathan shifted his head. Joan couldn't tell if it was a nod. They'd discovered the nightmares by accident. It had been obvious that he wasn't sleeping well, but given his reticence no one knew if that was due to insomnia or bad dreams or both. Until he'd spoken about it to the Joker, and the Joker had mentioned it offhandedly to Ruth.

It still stung that he'd spoken to a complete stranger about something so intimate, when it was a struggle to get him to say _anything _to her.

"Tell me about the last dream you had."

There was a good thirty seconds of silence. What optimism she'd maintained was fading fast. Of course it couldn't be that easy. _I must be beyond desperate, if I thought that all it would take—_

"There's…a fog."

Joan froze. If she hadn't been staring right at Jonathan when he'd spoken, she'd have thought she imagined the words.

"A fog?"

"Everywhere. I can't see through it. It's musty…it hurts my eyes."

It occurred to Joan that she ought to be writing this down, if only she could compel her hand to move.

"Could you walk out of it?"

"I tried. It followed. Or it was there before. I don't know. It's over everything. It burns and it's staining my clothes and I can't breathe."

"You can here. It's all right."

"I keep walking and the smell gets sharper the faster I walk and it gets thicker and it stains my skin. And it burns all over and I can feel it in my veins." There were small movements to his face that might have been grimaces, if he was fully awake. His hands tightened on the arms of the chair.

"Breathe, Jonathan."

He did. "And I can't move. And it's inside my veins, pushing the blood. The blood comes out through my skin. And I can't see and I can't call out and there's no one around even if I could."

Joan had managed to pry her attention away for long enough to retrieve her pen, but she made no motion to write with it. _Oh, honey. Yes, there is._

* * *

AN: I've listened to an appallingly small amount of music over my lifetime, and most of what I know either comes from friends/family or movies/television shows. Without _Watchmen_, I'd have never heard "The Sound of Silence," (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=h-S90Uch2as&feature=related), which is now one of my favorite songs.

Speaking of songs, the one that I use for inspiration while writing the nightmare bits is "Slide," by the Dresden Dolls, and it's here if you'd like to hear it: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=CKwLtzAvYSg

In order to hypnotize a person, they have to be willing deep down to allow it to happen, and believe that it can, but you still have susceptible people who are overly analytical or nervous and fight the process, and there really are techniques to trick or confuse them into it. I'm so susceptible that they all work on me, even though I know the tricks that are being used.


	18. Waters Around You Have Grown

AN: Well, I've written more than I ever cared to know about Shakespeare's characterization in regards to Renaissance philosophy, and I half-understood a Latin test. Now all I've got to do is write four pages on my idea of freedom as compared/contrasted to a philosopher's, and then it's Spring Break. You'd think an English major (creative writing, but still) wouldn't have this much of an issue with writing papers. On the plus side, I did get to talk about slash and shipping in Screenwriting on Friday. I love that class.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam,

And admit that the waters around you have grown."

—Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"

"The orderlies were in my cell."

Joan had been flipping through Jonathan's file, looking for her notes on the last session. At that, she jolted up, vision blurring and head pounding from the sudden rush of movement. "_What_?" _No._ _Not again. _It couldn't have happened again; Jonathan wasn't injured or withdrawn, and beyond that, it just _couldn't_. Not after all he'd been through.

"They were in my cell. This morning while I was out." Even now that he'd started speaking again, he'd yet to stop avoiding eye contact. Jonathan was staring out the window, eyes tracking the clouds and his voice barely audible. "They moved things. I could tell."

_Oh._ Her adrenaline drained as suddenly as it had kicked in, making her self-inflicted whiplash all the more apparent. They'd checked the room for contraband items, then. There'd been a sweep of his ward this morning, while the patients were at breakfast. She should have remembered. "They were in everyone's room, Jonathan."

"I don't care." She hated how flat his voice sounded now that she was hearing it on a regular basis. If three sessions' worth of conversation, all motivated by anger or fear, counted as a regular basis. He'd had a dry sense of humor as a doctor, but his monotony there had been out of sarcasm, not lifelessness. Not like now.

Still, Joan hadn't realized how much it would hurt to hear him talk again. "It's a—"

"I know it's a regulation. I used to work here, as I'm sure you remember. I don't _care_. I don't want a one of them anywhere near that cell. Not ever again."

Of course he didn't. If she ran the asylum, they wouldn't. Then again, if she ran the asylum, she'd have started a manhunt as soon as his injuries were discovered and it wouldn't have ended until the bastards responsible were behind bars. "Jonathan, I can't change the rules—"

"They can make an exception. Don't try to tell me they can't; I used to." He met her eyes; glanced back to the window just as quickly. "So petition them to make it."

She _could _make the request. That didn't mean that Jeremiah Arkham would give her the time of day."I will. But Jonathan, security's gotten tighter after y—after the Joker was committed. I can't guarantee that anything will come of it."

Jonathan met her gaze again, and this time he held it. "I'm not asking for a guarantee; I'm asking for an attempt. You owe me that much, Joan."

It wasn't her fault that she'd been assigned as his therapist; she'd tried as best she could to fight the placement. It wasn't her fault that he'd been committed to the very asylum that he used to run, or that the security camera outside his cell had just so happened to stop functioning on the night he was violated. It wasn't her fault that he'd been stripped of his license and dignity, and broken even further by exposure to his toxin. She knew all of that; reminded herself of it often. Knowing he was being irrational didn't make his words sting any less.

"I'll try. I promise I will."

Jonathan's attention was back out the window. She couldn't imagine he was comfortable sitting that way, with his feet drawn up on the seat of the chair and his arms resting on his knees. It was one of his standard positions in their sessions, rivaled in frequency only by the times he clenched his hands on the armrests with his feet planted hard against the floor. As far as Joan had observed, the former signified discomfort and the latter defiance, so of course they emerged at the times when they most needed to converse.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

And he was facing her again, fingers twitching as though itching for something to throw. "About what? The fact that my books were no longer in alphabetical order? They didn't take anything; I didn't have anything for them to take. It's their presence at all that I object to, and if you can't deduce why I would feel that way, then I can't see how you possibly earned a doctorate."

"Being argumentative isn't helping you, Jonathan."

"Neither is being locked up here."

Knowing that banging her head against the desk would only make the ache worse didn't at all lessen the temptation to do it. They were back at square one, only they weren't even _that _far. It was almost like playing Monopoly; they'd gone directly to jail without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars when Jonathan had been violated, but when he'd returned, they'd gone back to start, losing everything they'd gained in the process. Did he even _remember_ what little progress they'd made? Trauma and horrific nightmares were both symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder; for all she knew, he could be repressing the assault, or the events leading up to it.

Joan had never expected psychiatry to be easy. But just once, it would be nice if it wasn't god-awful. "I can't change your sentence, Jonathan. And unless the court decides otherwise, you're stuck here, so you might as well make the most of it."

He smirked, with no real amusement in the expression. "I'm a prisoner in an underfunded asylum. There's nothing to be gained from that."

_He can't really believe that. _Not after the success he'd had with his own patients; at least, the patients that he wasn't torturing. "There's release, if you put forth an effort."

"I lost my license. There's no one in this city who would even think about associating with me, and as such I'm not exactly employable. And without a job, I can hardly afford the insurance necessary to cover the medications. So what, precisely, do I have to look forward to?"

She'd never been so stuck between wanting to hug someone and wanting to wring his neck. The fact that he was absolutely right didn't make the decision any easier. "Honestly? I don't know, Jonathan. But considering how much you hate it here, I'd think you would leap at the chance."

"And that's your first problem." _First problem. _He mouthed the words again after he'd said them. It was a habit she'd noticed after he'd started talking again, and while she'd yet to determine the cause, it was worrying. It didn't help at all that she couldn't recall if he'd done it before he'd been traumatized. "Presuming that you have any idea how I'd act."

And to think that she'd been stupid enough to think things would be _easier_ once he'd regained his voice. In a way, it was—at least she had words to work with instead of guessing based on body language—but now she had to deal with his remarks. She'd never had a patient's words affect her so much before. Then again, she'd never had a coworker for a patient before.

"I'll talk to Dr. Arkham about the orderlies, Jonathan. I promise."

His shrug was nonchalant, despite his earlier insistence. "As if anything will change."

* * *

Lucy struggled to unclench her hands as she reminded herself, for the fifth time in as many minutes, that it was wrong to wish harm on the mentally ill. Even if that mentally ill person was bothering Dr. Crane. If she was going to be fair—which she really didn't want to be—Thomas Schiff wasn't technically bothering the doctor, just talking to him, as she did when he came into the rec room and sat beside her on the couch. Where he would have been now, if not for the paranoid schizophrenic between them. Because the man wasn't grating on her nerves enough without disrupting her schedule.

There were strands of hair on the arm of the couch, long and blonde. Karen's, probably. She'd been sitting there before she'd left for the restroom with an escort, and her hair had started to fall out again. The doctors suspected that she was purging somehow, according to Victoria. Lucy couldn't figure out how she'd manage it, considering that no matter where they went in Arkham, there always seemed to be at least one set of eyes on them. She brushed the hairs to the floor, watched them fall before turning her attention back to Dr. Crane.

_Why does he talk to _him? She'd heard Thomas Schiff speak. She'd never heard him say anything that came close to making sense. Yes, he was persistent, but so was she, holding a one-sided conversation with her former doctor every time they saw each other, to no avail.

Dr. Crane said something, and as she watched, Thomas Schiff reached out, took his hand. Took his _hand._ She couldn't remember ever shaking the doctor's hand, not even when they'd first met. She couldn't remember ever touching him _at all. _He _hated _to be touched. Lucy forgot her irritation with the schizophrenic; her attention was fully on Dr. Crane, stomach as clenched as her fingers as her mind raced through all the ways he could react. A panic attack, screaming, crying; she wasn't sure what she'd do if he cried. It wasn't as if she could hold him without making things worse.

Not that she'd have the courage to hold him in the first place.

Dr. Crane stiffened, glanced down at his hand, and slowly moved it out of Thomas Schiff's hold. The mental patient stepped back, said something, and Dr. Crane nodded. That was it. _That _was it. He'd let the man hold his hand. Not for long, but he'd let him do it.

_It doesn't make sense._ She half-choked as she exhaled; realized that she'd been holding her breath the entire time. He hated to be touched even before the orderlies had tortured him. And now he'd let Thomas Schiff hold his hand just because the man was operating under the principle that Dr. Crane still held his medical license? What made _him _that special? It just didn't make _sense_. Nothing ever did; not at Arkham. She'd thought she knew how things were, and then it turned out that Dr. Crane had been conspiring to hold the city at ransom. She'd started to deal with his disappearance, and then he'd returned, angry and silent, was assaulted and became withdrawn and silent, and now this. Her life had become an overflowing sink and the faucet was stuck on full force.

Dr. Crane sat beside her on the couch. She felt the cushions shift before she looked up, and raised her head slowly, almost afraid to look at him. Maybe it had affected him, and he was struggling to hold it in. Or not. She couldn't decide which was worse.

He was looking in the television's direction, as usual, but he wasn't actually watching.

"Hi, Dr. Crane."

He met her eyes and nodded.

"Is there anything you want to watch?"

A shake of the head, and he moved his gaze to the window.

"Okay. Let me know if you change your mind."

Dr. Crane didn't say anything.

Lucy started to raise her hand and stopped, hesitating. _Don't try it. You'll upset him if you try it._

_But he wasn't upset when Schiff did it._

That was all it took. Her hand was up before she even thought about moving it, crossing the small space between them and patting him, twice, before coming to a rest on his shoulder.

Dr. Crane went rigid, his mouth opening slightly without sound to accompany it. His eyes moved to the hand on his shoulder—the rest of him seemed too paralyzed to follow—then traced up her arm and met her gaze again. "Lu—Lucy?"

"Sorry. There was a hair on your shoulder." She pulled her hand back, and any guilt that she ought to have felt for lying to him was buried by the joy of knowing that he would talk to her too, even if he had to be coaxed into it.

* * *

"I thought you said therapy didn't have homewor_k_." The Joker lifted one corner of the notebook sitting on Ruth's desk, and let it fall back onto her paperwork with a satisfying thump. It was a composition notebook, so sadly it lacked the spiral binding. The Joker loved spiral-bound notebooks; they were an accident waiting to happen, and they always seemed to choose the least fortunate—least fortunate meaning, for his purposes, most hilarious—times to unwind on one end and either become hopelessly entangled with a book bag or ruin a shirt. He sometimes wondered if the clothing industries and the notebook companies were in cohorts on that sort of thing.

"It isn't homework. It's a suggestion."

He let the notebook thump against the desk again before looking up and cocking his head to one side. "A suggestion for what?"

"Yesterday you said that you were having trouble communicating your thoughts in a way I'd understand."

The Joker flipped open the notebook and glanced at the pages inside. Boring and blank, aside from the faint blue lines so tedious and straight across the page. It needed color. Preferably red. Or purple. He was a fan of purple. It wasn't a color most people could wear without looking deathly ill, but the Joker was nothing like most people; a fact in which he took the utmost pride.

And then Ruth's hand was on the page, setting down a marker. "So I thought that it might help if you tried communicating through a different medium."

_Because that worked _so _well with your_ _little IQ test. _His eyes flitted up to the clock. "And you want the story of my life in the next, uh, ten minutes?"

"I'm not asking for an autobiography." His hand moved from the notebook to explore the rest of the desk, and she swatted him away when he discovered the Post-It Notes. "You can write anything that comes to mind. And you don't have to do it right now."

"So what, in the next session?" He examined the Post-It Note he'd managed to tear away; orange and unmarked.

"No. You can take it with you. Like a diary."

The Joker tried to keep from laughing in her face and managed for all of two seconds. It couldn't be doing much for her self-esteem, but it couldn't be helped. There were tears in his eyes by the time he'd calmed enough to control himself and the look of disapproval on her face only made him start up again. "Ruthie, you have _no _idea what to do with me, do you?"

"Would it encourage you to write in that if I said yes?" She was so wonderfully deadpan as she spoke that he had to shove a hand over his mouth to keep from giggling again.

"You honestly expect this open some ma_gic_al gate of communication between us? You've always been such a realist."

"I don't expect anything," Ruth said, as he folded the Post-It Note in half. "But I'm willing to try it. Are you?"

"I don't think it'll make you happy." He put the paper in his mouth and chewed. "But I'll give it a try."

* * *

AN: Yes, I know I've already used a Bob Dylan song. I don't even care. "The Times They Are A-Changin'" is just that awesome. It's another song introduced to me by the _Watchmen _soundtrack, and I'm linking the opening credits of that movie where it was used, because that's the only full length version sung by Bob Dylan that I could find. www. youtube. com/ watch?v=573XmVOdD2Q To those who haven't seen Watchmen, the opening credits don't spoil the movie, and also feature a cameo by Thomas and Martha Wayne right at the beginning.

At some point in high school, I developed the theory that notebook and clothing companies work together to ruin your clothes so you'll have to buy more of each.


	19. Until You Love Me

AN: I wonder what it says about my mindset that when the assignment is "draft a short story," my mind automatically jumps to "surreal horror with a grotesque and distorted perception of reality and a literal interpretation of the Bible verse 'if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.'" Probably nothing good. On the other hand, it does make for interesting reading material. At least to me.

Quick note: The end section of this chapter is somewhat slashy-sounding. However, I intended it to be obsessive, not loving, so don't worry, I'm not about to turn this into a romance.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me; papa—paparazzi,

Baby, there's no other superstar, you know that I'll be your papa—paparazzi."

—Lady Gaga, "Paparazzi"

It was not a good day to be Jonathan Crane.

That wasn't to imply that _any _day was a good day to be Jonathan Crane, because they weren't, they hadn't been since the Batman had descended from the rafters like some sort of horrible, sanity-shattering harpy, and at the rate things were going, there wasn't likely to _ever _be a good day to be Jonathan Crane again, at least not until he was too old and infirm to enjoy it. Though chances were that his heart would give out from constant strain long before that became plausible, regulating medications or not. No, there was no such thing as a good day; Jonathan wasn't sure even sure what would _constitute_ a good day anymore. There had been a time when a good day had meant coffee and beating traffic into Arkham, avoiding small talk with his coworkers through the day and testing his latest compound when everyone else had gone home for the evening.

He didn't have those days now. He'd never have them again. He didn't know what a good day as a patient would be. No sessions and no orderlies would be a start, but as long as the shadows made shapes and the room changed dimensions and he couldn't tell what was really there from what the compound told him he saw, then a day could never be better than bearable, and most days weren't even that. Most days were bad.

But even then, there were bad days and there were Bad Days, and today, for a number of reasons, was a Bad Day.

They'd put him under, for one. Every time he walked through Strange's door Jonathan vowed that it wouldn't happen again, promised himself that he wouldn't go under, couldn't go under, couldn't risk giving anything away, and besides, he ought to have been able to fight it. He was a doctor, he was the best doctor Arkham had ever seen, and he knew the tricks, knew how to fight them. And yet every time they brought him in, he found himself distracted against his will, be it by Strange's voice or how the chair felt soft and giving enough to absorb his body if he were to recline that far, or the way the lighting moved on the walls though no one was touching the switch, and then, brilliance aside, he was out. They hadn't asked for dangerous information yet. Hadn't asked about anything except the dreams, but it wasn't the subject matter that made it humiliating.

He'd had another dream last night. Jonathan hadn't been able to move upon waking, or speak. Just to lie there, shaking, bed sheets soaked through with sweat. He couldn't remember what it was now; couldn't bring himself to be frightened by the memory. The waking world was bad enough, especially now that Lucy had laid hands on him.

_What was she hoping to accomplish?_ She'd lied about touching him. All the sessions they'd spent together, all the times he'd asked her about things like carbohydrates and calorie consumption and whether or not she was doing crunches when she was alone, Jonathan could tell when she was being dishonest. And it hadn't felt as if she was pulling something off his shoulder. It had felt as if she was putting her hand flat on his back, with intent to keep it there for sinister purpose know only to her distrustful, borderline-emaciated self. True, the way his mind was functioning now something as simple as a nurse taking his pulse could feel like a slap, but if it came to a choice between trusting his mind and trusting a woman laying her hands on him, he'd trust his mind even if it was showing him that sky had starting raining black licorice.

He'd meant to demand a real explanation, force the ulterior motive out of Lucy if it came to that. But the touch had brought up either bad memories or bad dreams—they ran together like a broken yolk with the egg white, and he'd never been skilled at separating the two—and when he looked at her, the fluorescent lighting had seemed to ripple on her skin, as if he was staring at her through water, and he felt the compulsion to put his own hand on _her_, see how her skin would feel. The distraction faded shortly after, when something shifted in his head and the lights looked how overhead asylum lights ought to, but the fear remained, and he couldn't bring himself to speak, let alone touch.

She was in the rec room today. She'd sat beside him again. Lucy hadn't touched him, not yet, but the fear of contact hung over his head like a thick, sentient rain cloud, one full of fear toxin and cyanide and unpleasantness, waiting for the worst possible moment to drop. It wasn't the only reason he'd asked for an escort to the restroom—the majority of that reason being that the monster was supervising the rec room today—but it was a significant part.

The hallway didn't tilt or shift on the walk back. It didn't change lengths. But the reflections in the tiled floor—freshly scrubbed, were the investors coming through?—were different than the people they ought to be reflecting. Jonathan stared down and his own reflection, blurred and moving in ways that he wasn't, and wondering what life would be like on the other side of the linoleum. It couldn't be any worse. Maybe.

"Jonathan." A hand on his shoulder again, but this time he didn't freeze, because the same had happened with the figures in the reflection, and while that didn't mean that it _was _Brooks, it stacked the odds in his favor. "Keep walking, all right?"

He nodded and moved his eyes away from the floor; not because he particularly wanted to be helpful or at all speed up their progress back to the rec room—to _it_, to Lucy—but because Brooks had stayed with him during his lunch break when Jonathan had seen who was supervising the rec room and grabbed his orderly's hand, and that sort of thing had earned the man more cooperation than Joan or the nurses or anyone else in Arkham Asylum deserved. There was a time when Jonathan depended on others, and it still turned his stomach as much as the meds, but he still had enough lucidity—at least, at the moment—to realize that anyone who wanted to physically overpower him would have to be as thin as Lucy for him to get away.

The rec room doors stretched from wall to wall when they opened, and Jonathan was concerned that they'd shrink back down as they crossed through, but what with all the other things that could go wrong, from assault to Lucy-contact to slipping on the floor and breaking his head against the wall to a deadly allergic reaction, it was hard to be bothered by the threat of impending, door-induced doom. Inside the room was normal, as normal as things could be, and Jonathan retreated to the farthest side of the room from _it,_ taking refuge behind the magazine table, focusing on the glossy tabloid covers instead of the orderly's voices. He felt the urge to run his fingers over the pages, reminded himself that communal magazines were a breeding ground for the plague, and resisted.

The Prince of Gotham was involved with yet another woman, it seemed, and the cover image was terrible; dark and gritty with Bruce Wayne half-hidden behind the girl clinging to him, most of his face cast in shadow. It made Jonathan's stomach twist to look at it—he'd never have thought the toxin would give him an aversion to bad photography—gave him a profound sense of wrongness that he couldn't quite place, and after a moment he resigned himself to being miserable on the couch and went to sit beside Lucy again.

"Hello, Dr. Crane."

Jonathan tried to speak, if only to dissuade Lucy from more dramatic attempts to attract his attention, but the bridge between his mind and his vocal cords was raised and he couldn't work out the way to lower it again, not with her sitting there staring like that. He settled for a nod.

She brushed a long blond hair from the arm of the couch. "They'd doing a psychology program on the History Channel next week. On Freud."

Jonathan couldn't tell if Lucy's expression was hopefully eager, or "cat creeping up on a fat, slow mouse" eager. He managed another nod. She continued to speak, but the voices from behind him drowned her out, like the bass reverberations overpowering the music at a concert.

"—just for a smoke, it'll take five minutes." Its voice was like a knife sharpening.

"Yeah, I'll cover for you." Brooks. Jonathan wondered how long he could go around monsters before the stain got under his skin.

"Right, I'll—where'd my pack go?"

"It's not in your pocket?"

"No." Footsteps. Jonathan forced his eyes to stare at the floor right as a pair of shoes stopped in front of him. "You see a pack of Marlboros?"

The reflection of its shoes were dark, undefined. The more Jonathan stared at it, the more he was reminded of crows.

"No." Lucy's hand was on his shoulder again, but this time, the touch didn't make him want to scream. Not because he was acclimated, but because he was emptied of disgust, heart too busy racing and face too busy burning to divert energy to emotion. Did she _know_, or only sense his discomfort? "We haven't."

"Crane?" It was smirking. He didn't have to look up. That sharp-toothed smile was etched into his mind's eye already.

"Here, Lotter." It was Brooks, but his voice was behind them, further back. "You left them by the magazines."

It muttered something about how it didn't read the magazines, but its footsteps were retreating and Lucy's hand on his shoulder suddenly bypassed that terror to become his most pressing concern.

"Maybe he'll get lung cancer," she said, and squeezed his shoulder once before letting go. As if persistence would change his hatred for contact, or bring them any closer. If that was what Lucy wanted. For all he knew, it was equally likely that she was out to sell his kidneys to the black market.

* * *

"Here." Ruth's hand was on the desk before him, as in their last session. This time, there wasn't a marker in its place when she withdrew, but a tube of chapstick.

"I, uh, thought the patients weren't allowed makeup products."

"It isn't makeup. If you insist on licking your lips raw, you should at least prevent them from bleeding."

"As least blood's red and exciting." The Joker popped the cap off the tube, examining the contents as he reclined back into his chair. "And not white and boring. No offense to you, Ruthie. I'd give you something, but I haven't been shopping, and my arts and crafts tend to be a little, uh, more _visceral _than—"

"Did you bring the notebook?" Her own pad of paper was at a new sheet, the date neatly written in the upper left hand corner. Life recorded inside the lines; boring to the point of inducing depression. The Joker hoped she didn't mind that he'd failed to observe his notebook's lines. Or whether or not he was writing in the "correct" direction.

"Do you see it abou_t_ my person?" The Joker spread his arms for emphasis. "I'm still organizing my thoughts, Ruth. It's like Hemingway said, the first draft of anything is shit."

"So when can I expect the second?"

A shrug. "You can't rush art, you know."

"Tell that to a comic penciler with a deadline." She wrote something down; did a good job of hiding her disappointment. "Is there anything in particular you'd like to discuss?"

He propped his elbows on the desk, licked his lips. "What'cha doin' tonight?"

She gave him a look so disinterested it could wither flowers. "Is there anything you'd like to discuss about yourself?"

"But we _always_ talk about me." Not that there was anything _wrong _with that; if other people would acknowledge that he ruled the world, he'd mandate that all conversations make at least one reference to him. And then one reference to sombreros, because sombreros was an inherently hilarious word. Still, if he wanted to be chivalrous—what a joke _that_ was—he felt compelled to make the offer. "It can't be good for your self esteem."

"It's your session."

"See? You didn't deny it."

If disdainful staring were a sport, Ruthie would be an Olympian. "If you don't want to talk about yourself, we could talk about Batman."

The Joker was sitting upright now, something that had happened a grand total of never in their sessions, not before that moment. "We could talk about what?"

"Batman." Ruth looked wary as she regarded him, and moved her chair back. Just a centimeter, at the most. "You focused all of your crimes on drawing his attention after the mob hired you to kill him, and you took steps to prevent that lawyer from exposing his identity. He seems important to you."

Important? _Important_? She called Batman "important"? Why not call nuclear fusion "important" to the stability of the sun? It was laughable—insulting, even—to take what there was between the Joker and his Bat and call it "important."

"Joker?"

Vital. Irreplaceable. His purpose. Closer, but they were just words, just a construct of man, and he and the Bat were above it. Words couldn't hold a Batsignal to the forces between them, binding them. It was like trying to cook gourmet with Hamburger Helper. Edible, but so very short of the mark.

In the beginning, there was the Bat, and the Bat's presence had drawn the clown, lost and alone in the darkness, given him purpose. He had been the only _real _human in the world, up to that point, and there was no point in trying to lead the Earth's other inhabitants to his point of view. He could add color to the canvas, but he couldn't change the gray base beneath. He couldn't make them understand.

But then there was the Batman, and the Batman was _real. _The Batman had colors, under the black, the Batman _understood_, much as he tried to deny it,tried to act as though he served humanity instead of using it as a channel to unleash the monster within.

_We can be monsters together, Bats. We can. I won't judge._

The Bat had called to him, and he'd answered. How could he refuse? The suit, the paint, the antithesis of the Batman's darkness. The antithesis of his code to protect. The Batman had his rules, his laws, his ideas that he could restrain his darkness, hold onto his delusion that there was humanity within. The Joker saw the world for what it was, sought to draw Batman to the light the way the Bat had drawn him.

"Joker?"

It was only right to return the favor.

It had felt like he was on fire when he'd first spoken to his Bat. Not the fire that came with the orderlies' beatings, but a burn of raw sensation, as if every nerve in his body was attuned to the Batman's presence, as if he'd lived without senses before that point, and they were suddenly stimulated all at once. He'd never felt that before. And now he _needed _it to function, to keep his mind from letting the black and white of Everybody Else slip in.

Needed to taunt the Bat again, to fight him, to see the armor, the glimpse of face he let show through, a desperate attempt to call himself human. That face, those eyes. The Batman's eyes, so dark, so alien, despite his attempts. The Joker had heard it said that consuming an enemy's flesh would give the one the enemy's strength. He wanted to taste the Bat's eyes, to swallow them, to see the world through that lens, see what made that boring world so appealing, so worthy of protection. To understand what drove the Bat.

To understand why he'd taken the blame for Harvey Dent and abandoned his clown.

_That wasn't _nice_, Batsy. That wasn't nice at all._

They were binaries, opposite magnetic poles. They needed each other to function, had to define themselves by what the other was not. Why couldn't Batman understand that? Why couldn't he understand The Way It Was, recognize that they needed each other to live and that this separation would tear the both of them apart? Didn't he realize he was _hurting _his clown by climbing into a self-inflicted cage? He had to be hurting himself. He _had _to.

_Bad Bat. Only _I'm _allowed to make you suffer. Only I'm allowed to teach you. _He'd make that point when next they met. Make it with knives, give him external scars to remind of the internal connections. Make Batman smile. Make Batman bleed. Cut him. Cut…himself. Cut himself open, and show the Batman how he felt inside. Put that Kevlar-clad hand inside of him, over his heart, so the Batman could feel it beat, feel how much the Joker needed him. _Then you'll know that I love you. You'll _have _to know._

_I love you._

_And you_'_ll have to know that you love me back. You can't deny it, not after you've felt inside._

The Joker found himself back in the straitjacket, en route to his cell. _No goodbye. Nice, Ruthie. _He licked his lips; they'd begun to bleed.

* * *

AN: It was only a matter of time until I used a Lady Gaga song. So this is Paparazzi, in all it's awesome yet disturbing yet hilarious music video glory: www. dailymotion. com/ video/ x9ltrs_lady-gaga-paparazzi_music If that link doesn't work for you, it's also on Youtube, though for some reason, all of the music videos for it I've found there, even the one from her official channel has cut about twenty seconds from the beginning: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=d2smz_1L2_0

There's a Batman comic which has the Joker mentioning that he finds "AIDs and sombreros" funny. Heath Ledger, when he kept a journal of the Joker's thoughts prior to filming TDK, also added those items to his list of "Things the Joker Finds Funny."

I personally view the Joker as a sort of stalker with a crush, but even if you don't slash the pair, the Joker's always got a strange "love" for the Batman, if only that he loves what Batman does for him as an adversary.

If anyone's worried that Jonathan's essentially been a total woobie in the fic thus far, I promise you, badassery is coming. I've actually started to lay the groundwork for it in the past few chapters.


	20. Deceiving You Into Believing

AN: Today I watched the Scarecrow episode of the Batman sixties cartoon (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=k2IIPbqFsJs), and wow. If Jonathan Crane was an actual person, he'd have hunted me down and killed me by now for laughing at him this much. But in my defense, how can I not when his grand scheme is to rob the farmer's market and he has lines like, "Come on men, let's harvest the lettuce!"?

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"He can pick any card from a pack, he is equally cunning with dice;  
He is always deceiving you into believing that he's only hunting for mice."

—"Magical Mister Mistofelees," _Cats_

"Your mouth looks terrible."

Said mouth contorted, along with the rest of the Joker's features, into the most exaggerated pout Ruth had ever seen. How he managed to make his face so mobile in spite of the scar tissue, she had no idea, but whatever the secret, once he carried out his sentence, he ought to consider a career in speech pathology. Or physical therapy. Ruth imagined that either field would pay by the truckload for his secret.

Not that truckloads of money would be likely to entice him, considering that he'd torched an entire warehouse's worth of the stuff. And a money launderer along with it.

Ruth had worked with a burn victim before; a failed suicide attempt. She didn't consider herself a squeamish person—her last serious relationship had been with a horror fanatic, so she'd sat through more than her fair share of slasher films—but even the memory of the scarring over the man's body made her stomach churn. She couldn't—didn't want to—imagine how terrible that kind of damage to the body would feel, particularly if it was severe and widespread enough to kill the victim. It wasn't the worst way to die, but it was up there. The idea of willfully inflicting that pain on another human being made her blood run cold.

It was sometimes hard to remember what the Joker was capable of. That wasn't to say that Ruth let down her guard around him, but it was disconcerting to think that the man who sat in her office and complained about things like his pizza being cold at dinner or the cut of his jumpsuit was the same man who had killed and tormented complete strangers without remorse. Or so she assumed. They'd never spoken in depth about his murders, because the Joker always managed to derail the discussion with talk about politics or philosophy or anything else that came to mind.

She needed to address that. Preferably today.

"_Tact_, Ruthie. You don't see me mentioning that _you _go around with the perpetual odor of cigarette smoke or, uh, scuffs on your shoe."

She glanced down at the patent leather pumps that she'd meant to polish and fought the urge to tuck one foot behind the other. "You just did."

"Only to prove a point. Is brushing twice a day not enough for you people? I mean, you realize that overexposing the human body to disin_fec_tants and antibacterials is causing us all so—"

"I'm talking about your lips, not your teeth." And they _did _look terrible; still cracked and bleeding from multiple lacerations. Maybe his habit of licking his mouth was a compulsion, not just a tendency. It could be a sign of depression. Or an obsessive compulsive disorder. Or anything, really.

She'd asked the administration to send an advocate to court so that they could petition for the right to medicate him without consent, and the hearing had been arranged. Of course, because life could never be that simple, the courts were still flooded with cases regarding all the theft and other crimes that had occurred when the city was evacuating during the Joker's attacks, and at current, the hearing was set a week before the Joker's evaluation period ended.

They did say that life wasn't fair. She preferred "life's a bitch."

"Are you not using the chapstick I gave you?"

"I am." He pulled the tube from his pocket and spread it over his lips to prove his point. "But surely you've noticed with your, uh, acute psychiatric observations that I've been known, on occasion, to lick my lips. This stuff wipes off, Ruthie."

As did his skin with it, judging by the state of his smile. "Have you tried to stop it?"

The look he gave her was almost sympathetic, as if he possessed some great insight that she was missing. It was an expression that he often wore when they spoke. "I'm in a padded cell ninety percent of the day, and in a straitjacket half of the time that I'm not. I move what I can."

"The pain and bleeding don't bother you?" They wouldn't; judging by twisted positions he sat in during their sessions and the length of time he held them; he either enjoyed pain or lacked the ability to feel it. Her money was on masochism, but they'd never seriously discussed it.

The Joker wrinkled his nose at the question and shook his head. "At least it's colorful."

_Colorful_, she scrawled down on the legal pad. About half of her notes for their sessions were little more than a list of words that had struck her as important. The other half was a desperate attempt to copy down his train of thought. Sometimes it worked. "When you say colorful—"

"Ruthie?"

"Don't interrupt, Joker."

"Well, sor_ry._ But I thought you might wanna read this."

"Read wh—" Ruth raised her head to find a notebook in her face. Specifically,the composition book she'd given the Joker the week prior. "You wrote in it?"

"I've been writing the whole time, Ruth. And I'm not finished, mind you." He wagged a finger back and forth, a look of seriousness gracing his features. It would have been uncharacteristic were it not so greatly overstated. "But I decided during breakfast that the fruits of my labor were ripe enough for consumption, so, uh, there you go."

"It's in English, I trust?" she asked, taking the notebook from his hands.

"Mostly. Like, ninety-nine percent."

Ruth braced herself as she sat the book down on the desk. For what, she had no idea, but if she'd learned anything about him in their sessions, it was that giving him free range to act—write, in this case—as he pleased would lead to either incomprehensible or nightmarish results. She had no idea which would be preferable, but she steeled herself as best she could for either possibility and opened the front cover.

The Joker's handwriting was the first thing to strike her. Ruth had never seen him write before, unless she was counting the fiasco with the IQ test, and she most definitely was not. It wasn't illegible, as she'd expected, but it was difficult to decipher, as his writing was small, untidy, and backward slanted, and the marker he'd used to write with was thick. It took her a moment longer than it should have to make out the words scribbled in the center of the first page:

_Arkham Asylum:_

"_To provide the most effective care for all patients, to enable them to reenter society, and to serve the mental health needs of the community at all costs."_

The mission statement for the hospital. Ruth had to stare at the page for a few seconds before she recognized it. It wasn't due to a lack of familiarity with the pledge, which was displayed in the asylum's lobby and which she saw every day on her way in, but the incongruity of seeing it displayed here. She raised her head; pointed at the page. "Why did you write that?"

He leaned forward, scanning the words. "Oh, that. For archeologists."

Ruth stared.

"You know, if this is ever read by future civilizations." The Joker licked his lips, reapplying the chapstick before she could muster a disapproving look. "I want 'em to know what fine establishment I'm writing from."

It took all her sensitivity training not to shake her head. She focused all of her energy instead on turning the page, to find a list on the other side. After a few seconds of deciphering, she managed the title. "Things the Joker is Not Allowed to Do in Arkham Asylum." Usually Ruth could hold in her sighs. Today was the exception. "Joker—"

"What?" This time, his defensive look could be genuine. "No offense, Ruth, but all your regulations sound the same. It's my way of keeping track."

"That wasn't the point of the notebook. It was to record your thoughts, remember?"

He shrugged; settled back into the chair. "You've gotta lay the foundation before you build the house."

Ruth managed to restrain her second sigh as she began to read.

_The radio only requires audience participation if it is playing songs from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."_

She raised her head. "When were you near a radio?"

"Physical in the infirmary."

_Asylum wear is not optional._

_The Joker cannot engage in artistic nudity._

_The Joker is not a certified gynecologist._

_The Joker is not allowed to rage against the machine.*_

Ruth stopped again. "What are the asterisks for?"

"Undetermined veracity."

She arched a brow.

"If an orderly said it."

"Ah."

_The Joker is one clothing violation away from being placed in locking clothing._

_The Joker is no longer allowed in locking clothing due to a) being able to work his way out of it, and b) breaking the locks._

_The Joker is not Santa Claus, and therefore it is sexual harassment to ask nurses to sit in his lap._

_The Joker does not need a routine check for cervical cancer._

_The Joker is not allowed to reenact musicals.*_

_Catatonic patients are not performance art pieces._

"When were you near the catatonic patients?" Ruth asked, digging through her purse for an aspirin.

"They do their physicals at the same time as mine." He smiled as if recalling a fond memory. That was hardly a good sign.

_The Joker does not need a Serious Injury List._

"Serious Injury List?"

"It starts on page twenty."

She flipped forward—he'd numbered the pages for convenience, and the sheets between the lists were blank, save for detailed sketches of Gilda in the margins—and scanned the list there. _1. Linda squeezed and pulled and hurt my neck on June 1, 2006. 2. Ruth slapped my hand on June 3, 2006._

"I _swatted_ your hand, Joker. You tried to steal my pens."

He cradled said hand to his chest, shaking his head. "It still hurt, Ruthie."

She rolled her eyes and flipped the pages back.

_It is not Hammer Time.*_

_It is not Miller Time, either.*_

_Jonathan Crane is not Harpo Marx._

_The word "stop" is not to be followed with "collaborate and listen."_

_A "good dicking" is not a cure for mental illness._

_Therapy sessions do not need a laugh track._

_The Joker is not allowed to begin a sentence with the words "I had a vision that…"_

_The Joker is not allowed to proselytize for Scientology.*_

_The Joker does not suffer from multiple personality disorder._

_The Joker is not licensed to give medical advice._

_The Joker is not allowed to engage in Kick a Ginger Day.*_

_Shouting "Darth Vader is Luke's father" at catatonic patients will not "shock and enrage them enough to wake up."_

_Neither will "Rosebud is the sled."_

_Just stop yelling at them, Joker._

_The Joker is not allowed to discuss morning wood.*_

_The Joker is not allowed to speculate on the size of Bruce Wayne's penis._

_The Joker is not allowed to perform dramatic readings of Cosmopolitan articles._

_The Joker is not allowed to compare size.*_

_The Joker is not allowed to throw Unbirthday Parties._

"_Because it's there" is not an acceptable answer._

_Arkham Asylum does not have, or need, a Masturbate-a-thon._

Ruth gave a moment's debate as to whether satisfying her curiosity would be worth the resultant mental scars. "A Masturbate-a-thon?"

"It's an actual event you can organize." The Joker pulled his feet onto the chair, resting his arms on his knees. "See, they try to reduce the societal stigma about masturbation by—"

"I can imagine how, Joker."

He spread the chapstick over his lips again. He'd need a new stick by the end of the week at this rate. "I mean, it's not like there's much else to do in this place."

"You'll see Jonathan Crane again tomorrow."

Even with the chapstick on, his lips still cracked when he smiled. "Now, if you could make that a _daily _occurrence—"

"You've got your dog." There was another drawing of Gilda at the bottom of the list, curled up in the grass. For a sketch done in marker without the aid of erasers, it was considerably skilled. It also gave her little insight into his mind, apart from the fact that he liked dogs and was easily bored.

"I wanna teach her to play fetch." His legs jiggled in anticipation, making the whole chair shake. "Haven't I behaved enough to be out of the straitjacket outside? It's not like there aren't orderlies."

"I don't decide that, Joker. And you don't have a ball to teach her with."

"Details."

Ruth closed the notebook and pushed it across the desk toward him. "I'll see. Just try to record your thoughts in the meantime, would you?"

"You can't rush—"

"Yes, you can. You said yourself that you didn't have anything better to do with your time. Of course," she paused, thinking. "If you need more time, you could always forgo your trips outside."

His mouth twitched upward. "Is that a threat, Ruthie? 'Cause, uh, I like dangerous women."

The Joker was still giggling when the orderlies led him out, and Ruth was still rolling her eyes.

* * *

AN: I'm a _Cats _fan and I'll proudly admit it. That said, you might be wondering what the quote from "Magical Mister Mistofelees" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=5Lk138R6ShE) at the top has to do with the chapter. Directly, nothing, but implicitly, it's a song about misdirection, and that's something the Joker is disturbingly good at, particularly in this chapter. Not only is he distracting Ruth from discussing his crimes and violent behaviors, he's also using the randomness of his writing to distract her from noticing his intelligence. Ruth saw the Arkham mission statement (which I made up, I couldn't find an official one) as out of place because she sees it every day in a different location, but forgot that the Joker would have only see it once when he was first committed, indicating how great his memory is. Likewise, she was impressed by his drawing ability, but too clinically minded to take a closer look and wonder if he hadn't studied art somewhere, perhaps leaving a record of himself.

The dates on the Serious Injury List (which is a _Rain Man _reference, and the first entry is taken just about straight from it) are for 2006 because I imagine that TDK takes place a year after _Batman Begins_, and I imagine _Batman Begins _took place in the year of its release, 2005.

The Joker's list was inspired by "The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army" (skippyslist. com/ list/).


	21. Not Made for These Times

AN: First order of business: I did an extensive review of that terrible, mannequin fetish-y comic on my livejournal, in case anyone's interested in experiencing the terror secondhand: lauralot. livejournal. com/ 3356. html

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Just this scarecrow caught in my mind;

Scarecrow not made for these times."

—"Scarecrow," The Veils

"_Guten Tag._" The Joker's hair was still curly. There was no reason why it shouldn't be, Jonathan supposed; it wasn't as if there had been a sudden change in humidity inside the asylum and the patients weren't allowed access to curlers, not even the sort that didn't need heating, because of the plastic used in the rollers. Upon reflection, the texture of the Joker's hair wasn't _that _incongruous to the man's temperament—it fit the "curly-haired people are freewheeling and irresponsible" stereotype perfectly—but the Joker's hair had never looked particularly curled in his hostage videos. It had looked filthy more than anything, and green. Now it was a mousy blond with the faintest green tinge, as if he'd been exposed to too much chlorine, washed, and spiraled.

Spirals. They were one of the most commonly occurring patterns in nature. They were also oddly entrancing. He felt the urge to pull on the Joker's hair, if only to see if it would spring back, but chances were that the Joker wouldn't take kindly to the experiment and retaliate with bloody murder. He crossed his arms instead, then wondered if the Joker wouldn't take that as a gesture meant to mock the clown's entrapment in the straitjacket. There was no way to win with some people. "_Ich spreche kein Deutsch_."

"You just did," the Joker replied, in what was most likely English. At least, it didn't sound French and at last check, he hadn't learned any other languages unless it had happened in his sleep.

A shrug. "_Nur ein Bisschen._"

The Joker mirrored his shrug as well as he could with his arms encased in canvas cloth. "English, then. Unless you speak Icelandic."

"Do you?"

"Nope." He smacked his lips on the letters "m" and "p." Well, the Joker smacked his lips at some point in every other sentence, but those letters especially. As far as Jonathan could tell, it wasn't related to the scars, which ought to restrict his facial movements. He was still enthralled by the scars, both for their function as the external manifestation of internal trauma, and for the number of limitations that they ought to pose but seemingly didn't. Jonathan wondered how well the Joker could chew or bite with such a disfigurement. Though more than anything, he found himself wondering again how the scars would feel. He'd accumulated more than his fair share of scars over his lifetime, and they all felt smooth. But none were as deep and damaging as the Joker's, and none as textured. How would the clown's feel?

Jonathan couldn't conceive of a way to gather that data without being bitten or otherwise damaged.

"Is this something you do often, Scary?"

His focus shot from the lower half of the man's face to his eyes, which were brown. That wasn't something Jonathan had noticed before either, and his mind reacted to the sight the way a round hole responded to a square peg. Brown was the color of mud and burlap and the water stains on the asylum's ceiling tiles. Even the richer shades of brown, such as coffee or Joan's skin, weren't Joker colors. What constituted a Joker color, Jonathan wasn't sure, but he imagined it had a lot of purple or red to it, whatever it was. Of course, short of a medical condition, red eyes weren't—The Joker had said something. It was likely important. "What did you call me?"

"Scary. And you didn't hear anything I said before that, didya?"

_Did you._ He had to dig into his palms with his nails to ensure that he didn't say it aloud. Most ordinary people didn't take well to having their grammar or enunciation corrected, and Jonathan couldn't imagine that a homicidal clown's reactions to _anything _would be more favorable than that of a normal person. Not that he knew what constituted a normal person anymore. He'd never been good with normal people, unless it came to making them scream. "What gives you that impression?"

The Joker's eyes glittered like water. Muddied water, given their not-murderous-clown-matching color. "Dunno."

_Don't know._

Another flash of his eyes, but lacking the good nature of the nature of the former. If the Joker's glances had a good nature. Given that the man's default expression was a knowing smirk, Jonathan didn't know what to make of it. Had he been this bad at reading people before the toxin? He couldn't see how he would have become so successful a psychiatrist, if he was. "I. Don't. Know. Happy?"

_Did I say that out loud?_ Jonathan bit down on his tongue, almost but not quite hard enough to break through the scabs where his jaws had clamped shut on it before. He'd insulted the Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime. Even through the haze of toxin damage and medication that colored every waking moment like an enormous, ugly gray crayon scribbling, Jonathan retained the self-preservation to realize that talking back to the Joker was akin to shoving his arm into a garbage disposal and flipping the switch, straitjacket and orderlies or not.

"I'm gonna take your twitchy and terrified silence as a yes. Now, as I was saying before I was so _rudely _interrupted—"

"Joker." Ruth Adams had spoken. Jonathan might have been grateful had her interference not implied that she thought him incapable of fighting his own battles. And also if she weren't a smoker. There was a scent of nicotine about her as ever present as the Joker's straitjacket or Joan's look of poorly concealed concern. It made him nauseous.

The Joker pouted, the corners of his mouth going down as far as the scars would allow. That indicated that he'd had the scars long enough to have some degree of control over them. "But I w_as_, Ruthie. My entire train of thought jumped the track."

"Oh. What a pity."

Jonathan had never thought much about Ruth when they worked together. Now his mind was completely overridden considering her, her cigarettes, her skill as a doctor, and most importantly—as long as he could force himself to focus on it—whether watching her talk back to the Joker was an incredible, laudable thing, or if this was like watching someone very slowly step into a dragon's mouth. Perhaps a combination of both, but whether it was suicidal or genius, it didn't change the fact that she smoked too much and that she'd come into work today with a scuff on her shoe and an uneven part in her hair. Suddenly she wasn't so fascinating after all.

"You know, Ruth—"

"If you're not going to talk to Jonathan, then there's no point in continuing the visit."

If looks would kill, Ruth and everyone else in the tri-county area would be in rigor mortis by now.

"_Fine._" The word was perfectly intelligible, yet still managed to sound exactly like a slamming door. "So, _Scary_, I was going to say that I _don't know_, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that you focused on what I called you instead of the question to which the afore_men_tioned nickname was attached. And the question, which, given your lack of protes_t_, I'm sure you didn't hear, was if you zone out like this often, but at this point, I don't think I need clarification, because you pretty clearly _do._ _Ja?_"

His mind said yes. His vocal cords said that they'd angered the clown once and weren't about to risk being cut out by speaking again. Jonathan wasn't sure when his various body parts had developed personalities and begun speaking. It was another little thing he couldn't see the fear toxin leading to.

"Apparently scarecrows aren't that good at English either."

Jonathan didn't say anything.

"Jo—"

"I have an excellent idea," said the Joker, trying and failing to brush his hair out of his face without the use of his hands. "Let's change the subject."

"I agree." Jonathan was fairly sure that he'd just spoken. _I agree. _His mouth moved to copy the words, to reaffirm.

"We've got a mutual friend here, ya know." The Joker didn't look angry anymore, or even irritated. In place of his scowl was the usual smile, slightly too wide to be comforting. Maybe he was skilled at hiding his feelings. Maybe he was so temperamental that his mood changed as quickly as his train of thought. Maybe Jonathan had imagined that he was angry in the first place, the way he was probably imagining that the width of the table was shifting thinner and wider by a few inches now.

The conviction that he had left didn't want it to be that last one. That would be unbearably sad.

Of course, everything was unbearable now. "We do?"

"Nervous little paranoid schizophrenic named Schiff ring a bell?"

_Thomas. _Thomas said he'd seen the Joker in the infirmary, before Teresa had caught him there and forced him out. The nurses were always catching him, be it in the halls or the nurses' station or the infirmary, or anywhere else he managed to get when he slipped away from Jacob, who was his orderly and another of the few that Jonathan knew but couldn't waste the effort to be afraid of. Not with all the worse orderlies and _it_ and the violent patients who remembered him less fondly than Lucy and Thomas and the fact that a building this old almost certainly hadn't taken well to all the steam when the mains had been vaporized, and thus it was only a matter of time before toxic mold brought on by the water damage killed them all in their sleep. "He worked for you." It wasn't a question; it was a memory from the time when the Joker's upcoming evaluation at Arkham had been announced and Thomas had talked nonstop about his boss, despite Jonathan's attempts to make him focus on other, more important concerns.

The Joker nodded, then shook his head in another fruitless attempt to move his hair out of his face. Jonathan gave a half-second's thought to brushing it back for him, and then decided that life without fingers would make his already unfortunate circumstances even more unpleasant. "You know, Crane, not to be dismissive of your doctoring skills or anything, but, uh, he was more than a little sanity-challenged when he signed on with me."

"It wasn't my idea to release him." He didn't know which idiot had decided that releasing a medication-dependent schizophrenic with an aversion to taking medication was a wise decision, but whoever it was ought to be slapped upside the head with a heavy, hardback psychology textbook. Presumably, they'd done it because the asylum was overflowing with new patients after the Narrows were flooded with toxin, and Thomas the twitching, hallucinating, silent mental patient was better adjusted for the outside world than the twitching, hallucinating, shrieking Everybody Else, but still. Was it any wonder the rate of relapse for the mentally ill was so high?

"Well, thank whoever it was for me." He tried blowing his hair back to no effect. Perhaps the scars affected his breath control.

"I wouldn't know."

Ruth Adams stood up. Was the conversation over? _It was longer last week. _Well, maybe it was. The Joker had said he was zoning out. Not that the Joker was the sort of person that Jonathan should take as a paragon of honesty—or any virtue, though he might fit a few of the deadly sins—but his thoughts did wander. He tried to keep them on track, but the track forked every few feet and he lacked pebbles or bread crumbs or any other way to mark where he'd been, so even returning to the previous thought was a struggle. Talking aloud made it easier to focus, but it also made it harder to filter what should or shouldn't be said.

Which was why the discussion regarding his former patient needed to end. He didn't trust himself not to say something important.

Fortunately, the Joker had stopped speaking when Ruth got out of her chair. Jonathan had yet to decide Ruth's interference was a good thing or a bad thing past that, though. Deviations in routine didn't often bode well. Not in Arkham Asylum. Besides, she smelled like cigarettes. It was a common belief that hell smelled like sulfur or brimstone. Jonathan was of the mind that it smelled like nicotine.

But when she reached the table, she stayed on the Joker's side, and only long enough to brush his hair behind his ears. "You should cut it, if it bothers you that much."

The Joker's mouth jerked as her hands moved his hair, from a half-smile to not quite a frown. "I'd rather go without the straps, Ruthie."

"Not my decision."

"I'm no_t _cutting my hair. Think of the princes that need help climbing through windows."

She rolled her eyes. "If they get high enough to reach your hair? I think they're fine on their own."

The Joker muttered something about tradition. Or mittens. Jonathan wasn't about to ask for clarification, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know either way.

"What do you do for fun, Crane?"

He'd almost forgotten the Joker was there; distracted by watching Ruth's journey back to her seat. It could only be a few feet, but it had looked to be a few yards. He wondered if his glasses prescription needed to be updated. Something toward the back of his mind suggested that the problem ran far deeper than his retinas, but it hurt to listen to that part, so he brushed it aside.

Jonathan had been able to handle things better, before the toxin. For all his confusion on how firm a grip he'd had on the world before the Batman had forced the drug into him and ruined everything, back when he was employed at Arkham, not imprisoned, his whole day hadn't be ruined by something like having mismatched socks. Not entirely. He had always been calm, collected, in control of a situation. But now all that he had was an imitation of his former dignity, and a bad one at that. It was a testament to everyone else's idiocy and not his skill at deception that no one realized it.

Then again, maybe they had. He couldn't read people. Not anymore.

"I don't have fun." _Don't have fun._ It seemed to Jonathan to have been the wrong thing to say. Joan didn't look happy. Her skirt was green today. It was an inch or so too long to look right on her; she needed to take it in.

The Joker, on the other hand, found it exactly the right thing to say, if his laughter was anything to go by. It wasn't a brief laugh, or a quiet one. It was loud, and carried on long enough to make him gasp for breath. Jonathan supposed that he should be grateful the Joker's anger over having his pronunciation corrected was gone. Part of him was.

The majority of him hated to be laughed at too much to care about anything else.

"What do _you _do all day?" he asked, when the Joker's giggling started to dwindle. "You're in the cell the entire time, aren't you?"

"Not the _entire _time." The Joker reclined as much as he could, which wasn't much, giving the question either serious consideration or total disinterest. Which ought to be hard to mistake for each other, Jonathan knew, but it also ought to be easy to know the size of the table he was seated at, and it had started changing again. It was as if Gotham had ceased to exist as he knew it, and inhaling the toxin had granted him entrance to a strange new land without internal consistencies or logic.

"Curiouser and curiouser," he muttered, not yet far gone enough to try tapping his heels three times.

"Eh?" The Joker cocked his head to one side.

"Nothing."

The Joker's eyes narrowed, though not with anger, and he scrutinized his companion for a moment—or maybe an hour—before he next spoke. "Like I said. I'm not locked up _all _day, just ninety per_cent._ I've got the showers and the therapy, and the walks with Gilda outside—that's a story for another time," he added, off Jonathan's confused stare. "And then there are the physicals, or other trips to the infirmary. But when I _am _in that itty bitty padded room, I read. Or write. Or draw; I've taken up emulating the masters, see if I can reproduce their work from memory. With a few, uh, little changes to make it my own, of course."

Jonathan ran his fingers through his own hair. It had been curled before he got sick of it as a fugitive and cut it off, though not as extremely. "Ah."

"I just did, uh, _Birth of Venus_, which is a _weird _little painting, anatomy-wise. And one of Botticelli's angels, too. You look kinda like 'im, you know?"

"Botticelli?"

"The angel."

Ruth stood again, sliding her writing pad into a file. Joan was still seated, but also gathering up her things. "That's all we have time for today."

Jonathan stood up while the orderlies set to work uncuffing the Joker's ankles, waiting.

"I started surrealism today, though," the clown went on, as though he'd failed to realize their meeting was coming to a close. "Magritte. You know him?"

A nod. Jonathan had never thought about the Joker's feelings on art or literature, but he _would _enjoy the surreal. "_The Treachery of Images_?"

"Good one." The orderlies stood back and the Joker rose, twisting his neck to the side. The crack was audible throughout the room. "But, uh, too easy to imitate." He straightened, and met Jonathan's eyes. The look of his face suggested that he hadn't been as forgiving about having his pronunciation insulted as Jonathan had hoped. "No, I did _The Rape_."

Jonathan found himself questioning his perception of reality again, because he _saw _the Joker as subdued by a straitjacket, but it certainly _felt _as if the clown had struck him.

* * *

AN: If you remember all the ramblings and links in my author's notes, you may note that The Veils' "Scarecrow" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=7ldLs_6_oAQ) was used in the Wayne/Crane video I linked a while back (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=2k7Ff2H0SFw). That was the video that introduced me to the song, so of course I have to recommend it again.

"I have an excellent idea: Let's change the subject," and "Curiouser and curiouser" are both _Alice in Wonderland _references. And of course the bit about the Joker's hair is referencing Rapunzel.

_Birth of Venus _is a very famous painting that really is odd anatomy-wise when you look at the length of Venus's neck and the angle of her shoulders, though that doesn't make it any less stunning to look at. (upload. wikimedia. org/ wikipedia/ commons/ 4/ 47/ La_nascita_di_Venere_%28Botticelli%29. jpg) Magritte is one of my favorite painters and created one of my favorite paintings, _The Treachery of Images _(en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ The_Treachery_Of_Images), and he also made _The Rape_, a rather disturbing painting which the Joker used to mock Jonathan's abuse and which takes the point that rape objectifies women and transcribes that very literally to the canvas: www. artexpertswebsite. com/ pages/ artists/ artists_l-z/ magritte/ Magritte_TheRape1945. Jpg

The German translates to "Good day," "I don't speak German," and "only a little."

Spirals are a common pattern in nature, and if you want to read a great horror series that uses that pattern as its premise, check out the manga _Uzumaki. _Unsettling stuff.


	22. What You Would Have Done

AN: Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"And of course you can't become if you only say what you would have done;

So I missed a million miles of fun."

—"Steal My Sunshine," Len

"You don't look happy, Ruthie."

_For someone who considers himself on such a higher level than the rest of humanity, he makes a habit of stating th_e _obvious. _She flicked the ash from her cigarette with more force than necessary, resisting the urge to extinguish the end of it on the Joker's face. It wouldn't be worth the effort to bend down—he was lying in the grass again—and besides that, it would either mean losing her job or being put on probation. Neither was an appealing prospect. Even so, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so angry at a patient, or on another patient's behalf. "That's because I'm not."

"You're never happy." The Joker's legs shifted in the grass as if he was making a snow angel, without wings or snow. "I've got a theory about that, you know. They say people who are afraid of their own thoughts spend over _half _their lives with their arms crossed, right? Well, I think that those cigarettes are your way of—"

"Why did you do that to Jonathan?"

The Joker wrinkled his nose. One of the few things she'd learned for sure from their sessions was that he _hated _to be interrupted. Good. Ruth hoped it made him unhappy. She also hoped that he'd chosen to lie on top of an anthill, or several pinecones. "He corrected my pronunciation."

"You're a grown man. Deal with it." Another flick of the cigarette. Ruth would wager a guess that this one had been forceful enough to knock out some of the fresh tobacco with the burnt.

"I spend my childhood being the weird kid who only knew French and had the funny accent. I shouldn't have to deal with it as an adult." His lips were still chapped. She took that as a small comfort.

"I thought you only spoke German."

The transition on his face from annoyed to confused was instantaneous. "Where'dya get that idea?"

"That's what you said. When you talked about your scars." It was the first time since that session and his subsequent panic attack that she'd brought it up. Ruth felt a pang of regret directly after, her cigarette forgotten halfway through its path to her lips as she watched for the Joker's response. She'd purposefully avoided the topic of his scars after that. He deserved to be taken down a peg after terrorizing another patient, yes, but it wasn't her place. Beyond that, it was wrong. She was meant to treat him, regardless of her personal feelings.

As it turned out, she needn't have worried. If the Joker was bothered by the memory, he kept it hidden. "I, uh, think you're remembering wrong, Ruth. Might be all the nicotine."

"He wasn't _trying _to insult you." Well, Jonathan Crane had been tactless enough before his incarceration, and there was no way to know _what _was going on his head these days, but he'd been brilliant in spite of his many, many flaws, and if any of that brilliance had survived the damage, he had to know that insulting the Joker was a poor decision. "He's a mental patient."

"What, and I'm _not_?"

He had her there. This time, when she flicked the cigarette, itbroke off at the filter. If this was an indication for how the rest of the day would go, then she'd be better off taking her vacation early. Or resigning. She couldn't imagine that her blood pressure was anywhere near a healthy level anymore. "You've got more control over yourself than that and you know it."

"Well, that's _one _interpretation." He didn't meet her eyes; tilted his head back to stare at the parking lot. The dog hadn't arrived yet. She didn't come at all, on some days. Ruth found herself wishing this would be one of them, then shook her head at the sudden rush of venom she felt for the man. He killed without remorse, and took delight in ruining the lives of those he left living. Taunting someone about a traumatic experience was far from the worst thing he'd ever done.

But the lesser of two evils was still an evil, and what's more, she'd had a part in putting the Joker in the same room as Jonathan Crane. She _shouldn't_ take it personally, but that didn't mean she wasn't.

"But in my own understanding," the Joker went on, "which—no offense to you, Ruthie—is _much_ better than anybody else's, you've yet to diagnosis my con_di_tion, so you can't say whether or not something's out of character for me, 'cause you don't have a baseline from which to judge. _Oui_?"

She pulled another cigarette out of the pack. "I think I understand you well enough to know when you're being an ass, Joker."

"Opinions vary."

"You'll be lucky if he ever speaks to you again." Of course the wind blew the smoke back into her face before she could turn away from it. She ought to just go home now.

His face contorted again; this time with mild disgust. "Did you two date, or something?"

She choked on cigarette smoke, something that hadn't happened since her first pack. "_What_?"

"Because look Ruthie, I know you don't meet a lot of people you can date, uh, legally in this environment, but you can do better than _that._"

"No, we didn't _date_." She tried to picture that and then stopped, to save herself the mental scarring. Jonathan Crane, apart from being a psychotic would-be terrorist who was likely suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, had also been a complete _prick _of a co-worker. And while he'd usually been a silent one, the conversations they did have had all either been awkward or irritating, without exception. The man had no social grace and had seemed to view talking to every other staff member as a divine punishment. True, he'd almost certainly been suffering from a mental illness at the time, but she hadn't known that, and knowing it now didn't instantly clear the bad blood between them.

"Then why do you care?"

She opened her mouth to say something about human compassion and decency, closed it. Tried again. "Because he's Joan's patient and her job's hard enough as it is."

"I didn't know that would set him off." He tried for an innocent look. Operative word being tried.

"Don't lie to me. You're bad at it."

"Well, that's another matter of o_pin_ion." The Joker hauled himself into a sitting position. "How was I supposed to know what his issue was? You wouldn't tell me, remember?"

She flicked her ash onto his straitjacket this time. Now if only he cared whether or not his clothes were stained. "Here's a thought: if you know someone's suffered a traumatic experience, maybe you shouldn't try guessing what the trauma _is_."

"Here's another: maybe you shouldn't go around correcting the way other people speak if you can't handle the inevitable backlash."

"Joker, do you want to lose the privilege to go outside?"

The Joker's smile didn't quite falter; he was too good for that. "I'm gonna call that an empty threat, Ruth."

"And why is that?"

"'Cause the only way I have to release all my pent-up energy at pres_ent _is through these little excursions." He stretched out his legs, knees popping. "And I _highly _doubt that you're gonna deprive me of that, since you're having trouble getting me to focus in our session as is."

Ruth shrugged. "That's a cute theory." She took a drag from the cigarette, exhaled slowly. "But then, you're not the one calling the shots. I am, and I don't reward bad behavior."

The Joker just had to go and ruin the moment by giggling.

"I'm serious."

"I'm sure you are." The giggling became an outright laughing fit. Patients were allowed cigarettes, provided they didn't try to snuff them out on their skin, or anyone else's body, and Ruth found herself wishing the Joker would take that up, if only so it would damage his breath control enough to cut his laughter short. The man could go on for over three minutes without breathing. She'd timed him. "But—it's just—you honestly think you're in control here, don't you?"

"I've yet to see it proven otherwise."

"Says you." Another giggle. Thankfully, it seemed to be the last of them.

_The joys of talking to a narcissist. _And he w_as _narcissistic, whether or not he fit the qualifications for narcissistic personality disorder or malignant narcissism. The metaphor from the other day when he'd explained himself as a god had cemented that. "Joker?"

That _hadn't_ been the last giggle, to her disgust. "Hmmm?"

"You said your difficulty communicating stemmed from being on a different level than the rest of us. Like a god speaking to a mortal. Right?"

"Uh-huh?" He was still amused but now curious. And the laughter was finished this time. Or so she hoped.

"Well then, shouldn't it fall on your shoulders as the superior being to facilitate the flow of conversation, since you have a better understanding of us than we do of you? Shouldn't you strive not to mock us, or contradict everything we say?"

The Joker's smile broadened, but to her relief, the only sound that came out was in the form of words. "You're _ass_uming I'm a _benevolent _god, Ruthie."

"No, I'm assuming that you don't want to make your stay here anymore tedious. And it will be if you keep behaving this way, because you'll lose privileges." She took another drag, watching her patient's expression intently. There was no change to it. "I'm only suggesting that you try to lead by example."

"But this _is _my example, Ruthie."

Ruth tried to hide her sigh in her next exhalation. It didn't work, but at least she'd made the effort. "You want everyone to be tearing each other apart? You want them to treat _you _that way?" she amended quickly. Of course he wouldn't care what happened to anyone else. "Is that the sort of world you'd be comfortable spending the rest of your life in?"

The Joker looked genuinely confused. But then, that was going by the assumption that anything about him was genuine. "Um, yeah?"

Was it possible to _feel _one's hair going gray? Ruth was sure she felt the color draining from her own. "Joker, what do you want to do with your life?"

He lay back in the grass and considered. "I wanna live in a van down by the river."

If she'd been within touching range of the wall, she'd have slammed her head against it. "What do you want _honestly_?"

"What does it matter?" Their eyes met, and for once his gaze wasn't glittering with mirth. "I'm in an _asylum_, Ruth. It's a prison with drugs and softer walls. What was it, our third session when I said I was in my prime and missing it? Because I still am."

"You wouldn't have to, if you tried."

"Really." It wasn't a question. The Joker's eyes hadn't looked this way since he'd talked about his scars. "I have no ID. I have no birth certificate, no social security number."

"There's an application process for—"

"I have no degree, or records of _any _kind of education. No experience in any legally employable field. And there's that itsy bitsy _little _issue of my trying to, you know, _blow up _thirty million people, and all the murders and destruction of property and assault and battery and possession of weapons without a license before that. Even if, by some miracle, I was ever deemed cured, just what do you think I would do with myself, apart from get my head blown off three steps out of the asylum by a citizen with a grudge?"

There was a long pause.

"Exactly."

"I don't know, Joker." She dropped the cigarette to the lawn, grinding out the spark with her heel. Her shoe polish hadn't entirely concealed the scuffed area. They needed to be replaced. Not that she had time for shoe shopping on top of everything else in her life. "I don't have those answers. But would you rather resign yourself to missing everything in life because you're stuck here, or strive for something better, even if it never comes?"

"It _will._" His expression went dark, and Ruth wasn't sure if he was tryin_g _to convince her or himself. "It will. But it isn't going to happen through _your _system."

She started to speak, to demand clarification, but his damn dog chose that minute to show up, and their train of conversation was immediately flagged.

* * *

Thomas Schiff had sat down beside him. Jonathan knew it was him without looking up. It would have to be. Lucy was busy in the infirmary with a physical—he wondered with something that was not quite real interest how she was handling the change in routine—and she was the only other person who ever sat beside him. Unless it was her friend with the hat and the hair loss, which he doubted, because not only had she never approached him alone, but also because the legs of the person next to him were far thicker than any anorexic's. And while the legs were all he could see, as he was staring at the floor, he felt reasonably safe in assuming that they belonged to Thomas Schiff. They'd sat next to each other often enough for him to make an educated guess.

Though a guess was the best he could make, given his less than reliable perception.

"Hello, Dr. Crane."

It w_as _Thomas, unless there was a sea witch in Arkham Asylum who could steal voices and copy the appearance of a human being. And unless Arkham had undergone major renovations in the time he'd been on the streets, that was unlikely. He couldn't see an asylum so starved for funding adding an enormous sea water aquarium anywhere on the premises. Then again, it _was _Arkham. Arkham Asylum and logic had a falling out somewhere around the time they'd taken his license away.

Thomas very gently poked his ribs, which was the schizophrenic's way of pointing out that Jonathan wasn't speaking, as if he didn't know that. All right, so sometimes he lost track of when he said things and when he didn't, but that didn't give a man who thought the Department of Motor Vehicles had tapped his phone lines the right to touch him. He distinctly remembered telling Thomas not to do that sort of thing when he'd been the man's psychiatrist, and Thomas had only needed to be told once. This was what happened when Jonathan wasn't allowed to fix things. The world went to hell and his socks didn't match.

"Hello, Thomas." He held out his hand. Thomas was supposed to touch it. It was routine, and while he wasn't as anal retentive about that sort of thing as Lucy, this was one custom he'd prefer to go as established.

Thomas didn't fulfill his side of the action. "Jacob made me come back in."

"From the nurses' station?"

He shook his head. Vigorously, like a wet dog. It reminded Jonathan of the Joker, which he did not like at all, so he went back to staring at the floor. That was always the safest option, unless the tiles started to look as though their pattern was changing. "From the hall. I didn't know he was watching me when I left."

"When people are looking at you, it tends to mean that they're watching, Thomas."

"Oh."

"Just for future reference."

A pair of shoes—Jacob's, he had a bleach stain on them from the time he'd helped clean up vomit two weeks ago and he'd yet to replace them—appeared on the tile. They clashed horribly with the linoleum. "Lotter's missing his cigarettes. Have you seen a pack, Thomas?"

"Smoking gives you cancer," Thomas informed him. If Jonathan had money, he'd make a large wager that the man had learned that from a public service announcement and was simply parroting it back without any opinion of his own on the matter. The world had long ago ceased to make sense, but Thomas Schiff was still predictable.

"I'll keep that in mind. Jonathan?"

"I once knew a man whose dog told him to cut his entire family into pieces," said Jonathan. He'd meant to say no, but somewhere along the line it had gained several more syllables and an entirely different meaning.

"Right. I'm taking that as a no." The shoes disappeared.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Crane."

"It isn't your fault, Thomas."

There was a pause. From somewhere behind them, it said that it had found its cigarettes.

"The Joker says that he has a dog," Thomas said. "But his doesn't talk."

_The Joker. _Jonathan wasn't sure what he felt about the clown. He'd been angry after they'd hurried the Joker out of the meeting room, and humiliated, but those feelings, like every other feeling, were like tides. In or out, and now it was out. He didn't know what he felt about the Joker. He didn't know what he felt about anything anymore, beyond that if he'd had the ability to leave the asylum, he'd have wanted to take its Marlboros and travel to the Louvre, or wherever that painting of Magritte's was held, and hold the cigarettes against it one by one until there was nothing left but ashes.

* * *

AN: "Steal My Sunshine" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=E1fzJ_AYajA)was probably my favorite song in the summer of '99.

Jonathan's line about the dog comes from the comic _Haunted Knight_. The sea witch bit was of course a reference to _The Little Mermaid._

The Joker's response about what he wants to do with his life is taken from one of the greatest _Saturday Night Live _sketches ever, "Down By the River," which I can unfortunately only find it its entirety on Hulu: www. hulu. com/ watch/ 4183/ saturday-night-live-down-by-the-river For those outside of the US, I've been told there are ways to make Hulu work for you (www. anonymous-proxies. org/ 2009/ 06/ hulu-outside-us-real-solution. html) but if it isn't effective for you, the audio to the skit is on Youtube, but without the accompanying footage: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=KDsG8IsBPoM&feature=related


	23. The Masochism Tango

AN: All right, so this time my Batman film information comes straight from Christopher Nolan himself: latimesblogs. latimes. com/ herocomplex/ 2010/ 03/ christopher-nolan-takes-flight-with-superman-we-have-a-fantastic-story-1. html It's mostly about the new Superman film, but it does tell us that Mr. Freeze will not be in the next Batman film. And also that Christopher Nolan is looking to wrap up the story, though I'm not sure if he means the Batman is a fugitive story, or the story altogether.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Fracture my spine and swear that you're mine,

As we dance to the masochism tango."

—Tom Lehrer, "The Masochism Tango"

The Joker talked back on most nights.

Granted, the orderlies were usually too focused on throwing him around the cell—he hadn't known it was possible to slam against a padded wall until he experienced it firsthand—to reply, and even when they did, the conversation wasn't up to much. There were in the Joker's experience, three types of orderlies in the world: those forced into it by a lifetime of unfortunate circumstances and poor decisions, those who took it up to work express desires that weren't acceptable in polite society, and the real nut jobs for whom this was an ideal profession. The orderlies were the same as the average street thug, in that respect. That third type of orderly didn't exist in Arkham Asylum, to the Joker's knowledge, and the ones make visits to his cell were most definitely type two. And guys who got off on pounding other people through the padding flooring weren't the best and the brightest conversationalists.

Still, it _could _be entertaining, albeit in a very different way than what the Joker assumed they were aiming for. It gave an amusing little insight into the mindset of garden variety _Homo stultus_, and occasionally, their so-called taunts were comedy gold. "You shit-eating, fuck-faced clown cock," indeed. The Joker couldn't dream up something that moronic if he tried, unless his attempts were aided by several blows to the head with a sledgehammer.

However, most of their insults were not the things unintentional hilarity was made of. They were either trite—the Joker had lost count of how many times he'd heard "Bozo" or "Krusty"—or infuriating. Freak. Psycho. Crazy. Those got old. Quickly.

So on some nights, he didn't engage them. That wasn't to say that he usually fought back. He _was _curious to see how he'd fare in a fight with them—he'd taken on larger groups, but usually with the aid of weaponry—but that would have interfered with his current scientific observation. Namely, to see if they'd ever lose interest. So far, the research had proved inconclusive, but he was willing to continue until it became tedious. Well, _unbearably _tedious.

No, he didn't fight back. But he usually deigned enough to reply.

It was always fun to watch their reactions on the nights that he didn't. There was a hesitation in all of them, though it varied from around one second to about thirty, akin to the first time he'd awoken with them in the cell and nobody tried anything until he made the first move. Fear of the unknown. They might find it unsettling if he laughed and quipped his way through a beating, but at least they _knew _he was mocking them. They knew—or so they presumed—what was going on in his head. But when his lips were locked, they didn't, and that made the experience all the more delicious. The Scarecrow would have been proud, if they ever got back on speaking terms.

If tonight were a talking night, he'd have asked if any of them had a penchant for ex-employees with pretty blue eyes. Not that he expected an answer in words, but Joker could read body language as pianist read music, and knowing who was roughing up the farm equipment could be useful at some point in the future. Maybe they _all _had. Maybe Jonathan had been their punching bag of choice before he'd come along. And if that was the case, Jonathan ought to be _thanking _him, not correcting the way he said things and getting all huffy when the Joker discussed art. True, he was one twist short of a Slinky, but that was hardly an excuse.

Unintentional salvation or not, it was a moot point because tonight he wasn't talking. He was due for a night of silence—the Joker stretched them out to avoid desensitization-and besides, he wasn't in the mood. Yes, they were playing with the dragon's tail, but even the dragon had to sleep sometimes. There was a time and a place for repartee and it wasn't now, unless his conversation partner was wearing black Kevlar and a cape. Any time was a good time for that.

Sometimes he could pretend it was his Bat, if he shut his eyes. Pretend that the Caped Crusader had been pushed over the edge—_where the fun really starts_—as he was at MCU. It was hard to believe that had only been a little over two months ago. It felt like years. Sometimes, the Joker found himself unable to focus on anything else, wanting to scream, to claw at himself in a desperate attempt to recreate the sensation of those gauntlets digging into his skin. Like an addict in need of a hit. He didn't use drugs—why dull his mind when his perception was naturally at a level above any high?—but he _was _a junkie in a way. Closing his eyes and imagining that it was his Batman, albeit furious and so heavily intoxicated as to lose all his fighting grace, was better than nothing, pathetic as it was.

"_Freak_."

His eyes opened as a fist connected with his stomach. It _would _be better, if Hadley didn't insist on ruining the illusion.

The orderly sneered, as if they were children on a playground and getting the other to respond still constituted as winning the fight. The Joker was of the mind that the phrase "one foot in the grave" had never been more appropriate. _If I kill him messily enough, would that bring the Bat here?_

* * *

"I'm not going to discuss it."

If Joan were so willing, she could pull out her phone, snap Jonathan's picture, and submit it to a psychiatric publishing company to be used as a perfect visual aid for oppositional behavior. Because everything about his posture—straight as a board, crossed arms, angled away from her and eye looking even farther off than that—screamed "I want no part of this." And that was without going into the fact that he'd told her twice he wasn't willing to discuss the previous day's conversation with the Joker even though she'd only approached the subject once.

"All right. What do you want to discuss?"

"I don't."

To think that she'd once thought conversations with him were difficult _before _he'd been committed. Then, he'd just been reticent, and quick to cut short any discussion that wasn't strictly business. She'd written it off as shyness at the time. Frustrating, but nothing compared to now. Now, well, she'd once had a disorganized schizophrenic patient who'd spoken English as a second language, and even that woman had been easier to coax words out of than Jonathan. "I've been talking to Dr. Arkham all week."

Jonathan gave her the briefest and most uninterested of glances. Joan wondered if it was sarcasm or if he'd genuinely lost the ability to recognize that looking at her while she spoke showed his curiosity.

"He's agreed to keep the orderlies out of your room until you're comfortable with the idea."

She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen Jonathan smile. This one only lasted a second before he concealed it again.

"Did you want to talk about that?"

"About what? It's over and done with." _Done with. _He was still mouthing words. Joan wished she could ask why without sending him into a rage.

"The exception is over and done with," she corrected, trying to keep it from sounding like a correction. Given their progress so far, failure on that front was almost a given. "But what about your feelings toward—"

"My feelings on the matter aren't relevant. It's over."

_If only it was that easy. _"Jonathan—"

He turned to face her. In the sessions before she'd angered him enough to get him talking on a regular basis, Joan would have viewed that as a triumph. But the looks he shot her whenever their eyes met had made her rethink that at once. "I believe this is the third time I've said that I'm not going to talk about it."

His words were so calm; so condescending. He'd have seemed his own self if not for the shaking that had never fully stopped, the way his eyes darted away as soon as he made his point. And if not for how broken he'd seemed in the infirmary and his first days in the asylum, before he'd regained enough control to hide the turmoil beneath the surface. "You were talking about the Joker, not—"

"You know perfectly well what I'm saying." His voice was sharp, though his posture had become all the tenser, like a child trying to hide in a box that was just slightly too small. "You keep talking about how you want to help me. And I'd believe that you did, in—in some misguided way, if not for your habit of trying to pull everything apart at the seams." Jonathan shook his head, freed one hand from his position to wind it through his hair. "I'd think that a _doctor _would know that if you want a wound to heal, you don't rip the bandages off."

"And I would think a psychiatrist would recognize the need to discuss the events that led to the current frame of mind."

"_One _event." He stopped pulling at his hair and went back to crossing his arms. If they were crossed. From where she was seated, it looked equally likely that he was hugging himself for comfort. "One. And since you know about my exposure to the toxin, and you know that I didn't receive the antidote quickly enough, I fail to see how talking about it will do any good." _Good._

Again she found herself torn between wanting to comfort him and wanting to slap him with her desk lamp until whatever was wrong inside his head straightened itself out. "That's the only thing bothering you?"

"I'd hardly have said otherwise, would I?"

_I'm not going to hit him with a lamp. I'm not going to hit him with anything. I'd lose my job. And it wouldn't cure brain damage anyway. _"Jonathan, I think that keeping everything inside the way you are is just going to cause you more pain in the long run. I think that it's going to keep hurting unless you can come to terms with it."

"I don't care what you think, Joan."

"I can see that."

* * *

"So then—" The Joker placed a hand over his mouth to stifle his giggles, held up his free hand to indicate that he needed a moment. Why he should cover up his laughter now after cackling through the rest of the session, Ruth had no idea—unless he considered it poor showmanship to laugh at his own joke—but whatever the reason, she was grateful. His laugh varied between a rasp and a near falsetto, and neither was one she could listen to for a prolonged period of time without a headache. Particularly when she'd missed her morning cigarette break thanks to a staff meeting that had run over. "So then, he sends his, uh, his "boy" up there, and I grab the guy, shove him down against the table, face first, and _ta da_—" He was half-choked with laughter again; unable to continue.

"The pencil disappeared." How she kept her voice so deadpan while the idea shook her straight to the core, even Ruth wasn't sure. Much as she wasn't sure how she was ever going to get that mental image out of her head. She didn't even want to look at her pen as she wrote, not now.

"Right." The Joker wiped at his eyes and straightened up, a hand pushed against his ribs as he did. "Ah. I haven't laughed that much in a while. Sorry. So everybody shut up right afterward, overcome by art, I think, and—"

"How did that feel?"

For once, the Joker didn't look infuriated at having his story cut short. His brows knit, and though his smile faded, it stopped short of becoming a frown. "Come again?"

"How did you feel after you—after that magic trick?"

His head tilted to the side; the motion shortly accompanied by a shrug. "I, uh, went back to business directly after. Word of advice, Ruthie: if you're ever dealing with the mob, you'll wanna move quickly, 'cause even if you've got 'em scared shitless—and they should be shitless, if you're doing it right—there's always somebody stupid enough to whip out a gun. Not the dons, they're smarter than that. Usually, I mean. Gambol, well, he kinda wasn't. But their goons are—"

"I don't plan on associating with the mob, Joker."

"Oh." His brows creased again. "Well, good for you, Ruth. You stick with your morals. Less chance of getting killed and dumped in the river that way too."

"You don't remember feeling anything at that moment? Anything at all? Amusement, anger—"

"Well, amusement, yeah." The Joker was staring at her as if she were the one being evaluated. "I thought that, you know, the uncontrollable laughter made that pretty clear."

"Did you regret it at all?"

The Joker tilted his head again. "Why would I regret a great joke that went off without a hitch and, uh, also prevented me from getting my head pulled off?"

"So it was a matter of self-defense?"

"No. That was a bonus."

Wonderful. Even his own safety fell by the wayside in favor of satisfying his twisted sense of humor. "You didn't feel any remorse for ending someone's life?"

The Joker sucked on his scars as he thought. Going by his expression, he wasn't doing any deep and meaningful soul searching in regards to her question, but trying to come up with a polite answer to a ridiculous suggestion. "Who was it that said 'forget regret or life is yours to miss'?"

She shrugged.

"If I felt bad about that sort of thing, I think I'd have realized _way _before I got that far into the criminal element that I'd gone into the wrong line of work."

"I suppose you would have." The Joker felt no remorse for taking lives, or for those still living that he'd left physically and mentally damaged. He spoke of Gilda with more affection than any person they'd discussed in their sessions, and when he'd decided that Jonathan Crane had insulted him, he'd completely overreacted and yet didn't acknowledge it, apparently reasoning that reminding someone of a traumatic experience was on par with correcting someone's English. The Joker seemed to have no understanding or caring of the pain that he caused, and no concerns for humanity as a whole, only how things affected him. She ought to diagnose him as a sociopath here and now, send him off to Blackgate and return to life as usual before she developed ulcers.

If only it were that easy.

Ruth would do it, if she knew anything about his past that could show a history of conduct disorder. Or if his affection for the dog didn't love so genuine. It wasn't improbable—or even unlikely—to assume that the Joker was a great actor, but Ruth had dealt with antisocial personality disorder before. Those with it had the perfect illusion of charm, but nothing beneath the surface, and their lack of empathy for people and animals quickly emerged under scrutiny. What the Joker felt for Gilda felt real, however twisted or unusual that caring may be. And the mood swings, the panic attack. The way that he'd seemed to regard her desires when he agreed to take the notebook.

It might all be a lie. Considering what he'd done to the city before being committed, it almost certainly was.

But Ruth couldn't block the doubt from her mind, and as long as that existed, she couldn't write him off, no matter what damage the stress would wreak on her for her efforts. Morality in Arkham Asylum—or any of Gotham City—was more a murky gray than black and white, but for Ruth, this issue was still clear as day and she couldn't bring herself to compromise without losing the ability to sleep at night. "That's all we have time for today, Joker."

"Right." He stretched his arms out, shoulders popping. "See you tomorrow, Ruthie."

"See you then."

* * *

AN: "The Masochism Tango" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE) is by Tom Lehrer, one of my favorite musicians. I don't think I've ever heard a song of his that hasn't made me laugh at some point.

_Stultus _is Latin for fool. And Krusty is in reference to Krusty the Clown from _The Simpsons._

"Forget regret or life is yours to miss" is a song lyric from the musical _Rent._


	24. Where the Hurt Is

AN: Out of curiosity, has anyone else who publishes on this site had an issue as of late with uploaded chapters missing spaces between words or commas? Because it's happened a few times in my latest chapters, and I've even looked at the original Word documents to clarify that my typing isn't that bad.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"If there's one thing I've learned about my family, it's that home is where the hurt is."

—The Joker, _The Joker Blogs_

Arkham patients with a history of violent behavior, be it to themselves or to others, weren't allowed in the restrooms unsupervised. Neither were the patients with eating disorders, or those lacking the mental capacity or external awareness to handle things without assistance. Before the League of Shadows had unlocked the doors and let the most dangerous patients loose on the city, Arkham had restroom attendants to supervise the washrooms at all hours of the day. After the breakout, funds were lacking and many employees were either unwilling or unable—affected by the fear toxin themselves—to return, and the position had been dropped. Now the orderlies were encouraged to wait inside and supervise but only required to do so for the aforementioned patients, and the orderlies who had the choice chose, without fail, to wait outside. The restrooms were the filthiest part of the asylum, and that was saying something.

Jonathan Crane did not meet the requirements necessary for supervision, and as such found himself in the restroom alone.

It was the restroom between the high security cells and the psychiatrists' offices, and the sink farthest from the door didn't work. It had never worked in Jonathan's time at Arkham, not on the day he began to work there, not now, and not a day in between. To his knowledge, there were no plans to fix it. No money had ever been set aside in the budget for its repair in better days, and strapped for funding as they were now, no money would ever be. There were things the asylum needed much more and besides, there were three other perfectly functional sinks to choose from. There had been an Out of Order sign taped to the faucet once upon a time, but no one had bothered to replace it after a patient tore it down. It didn't work, and everyone knew it.

What everyone did not know was that a part of the sink's piping was loose, specifically the U-bend. By Jonathan's estimate, there were two people who knew about it, and one of them was him. He wasn't quite sure how he'd discovered it—it had been in the days before he'd adjusted to medication, and his memories of that time were as blurry as a looking through a Vaseline-smeared camera lens, like the special effect in the original _Star Wars_—but however he'd come across it, it had since become his favorite part of the madhouse.

_Though it would be nice_, Jonathan couldn't help but think, tugging at the pipe while the tile dug into his knees through the uniform, _if it would come off without hours of effort. _All right, so it probably hadn't been hours, because Brooks would come in if Jonathan took too long about things, but that was no _guarantee_. The orderly could be very,very engrossed in a conversation, or breaking up a fight, or overcome with sleeping sickness. That last one wasn't as plausible, but in a city as diseased as Gotham, anything could happen. However long it was taking, it hurt his hands to tug on rusted metal, and he _hated _the sound that the pipes made when he pried it free. It was high-pitched, shrieking, so painfully loud that Jonathan couldn't understand how the orderlies missed it from the hall.

It was an _ugly _sound, not at all like footsteps on snow or scissors through fabric or the receipt-printers in convenience stores and banks. It made him think of crows, and by extension, scratches and beatings and being forced to eat dirt and all the other things he'd left behind in Georgia.

The more he listened to it, the more bile rose at the back of his throat. Arkham Asylum was hell on Earth, but at least he had fond memories here of the times before his incarceration; his experiments and toxin assembly line in the basements and those times when Arkham or Joan or somebody else would buy everyone doughnuts and there'd still be a few left when he snuck in after everyone else was gone, because if there was one thing he hated more than small talk it was letting his coworkers know he had something in common with them, even if it was something as trivial as a penchant for jelly-filled, glazed confectionaries.

Georgia had no jelly-filled, glazed confectionaries. It had nothing but unpleasant memories and hay fever.

He braced a foot against the wall and pulled. The U-bend came loose—as did a fair amount of the skin on his palms—with a loud, piercing sound entirely too much like a bird shrieking in his ear just before its talons tore strips out of the flesh on his arm. Or neck. Or anywhere. Jonathan pretended to have gone selectively deaf, told himself that pipes sounded nothing like crows, and almost managed to believe it as he tilted the pipe to the side, a hand below it to catch whatever fell out.

Nothing.

Jonathan wasn't anticipating nothing. He'd prepared himself for a number of scenarios—spiders, the long black hair of an Asian-style ghost, pills, crayons—but not nothing. Nothing left him sitting there with a confused expression, gently shaking the pipe back and forth as though it were an Etch-a-Sketch. It shouldn't have surprised him. There had been nothing inside at least a fourth of the time he'd carried out this process. _They must have caught Thomas._

Caught him. It made things sound so dramatic, as if he were humanity's last great hope taken down in the crossfire—the crossfire for what, Jonathan wasn't quite sure—and not the way it really was: which would be that he'd been stopped from wandering unsupervised. Oh well. They'd see each other in the rec room today, barring nuclear holocaust or flooding. Or a swarm of army ants. Thomas might have it then, which would be good, and if he didn't it would mean that Jonathan wouldn't have to touch his hand, which was also good, so—

The door started to slide open. Jonathan shoved the pipe back with force that reverberated painfully all the way up to his shoulder and bolted up only to slam his head against the sink halfway through the act of rising. _Ow_. By Jonathan's estimate, he had all of two seconds before Brooks was fully in the room and the pain radiating from the back of his skull downward was greatly hindering his ability to use that time to create a convincing excuse for why he was on the floor.

"Dr. Crane?"

It wasn't his orderly's voice, and besides, Brooks didn't call him Doctor. There was a rush of footsteps—accompanied by a rustle of fabric that sounded not unlike crows' wings—and then there was a pair of orange pants before him, which knelt down to reveal the rest of Thomas Schiff's body. "Are you okay?"

"Aside from a hairline fracture to my skull?" Jonathan asked. "Couldn't be better." That, or he only moaned. Either would be a long string of sounds and he wasn't sure.

"Do you want me to get—"

"No." Jonathan grabbed his sleeve to prevent him from rising. The cloth was softer against his palms than the pipe had been, and he wondered if his hand would leave rust streaks when he pulled away. Tetanus. As if the world wasn't out to kill him specifically already. If he had to die, he didn't want it to be from lockjaw. "Thomas, did you—"

The schizophrenic's hand disappeared into his pocket, reemerged, and met Jonathan's own scraped, stained free hand, dropping a few pills into his palm. "You wanted the pink ones, right? Because I know you asked for the blue ones earlier, but I thought that—"

Jonathan shoved the pills into his pocket and stood. Thomas mimicked the motion without being asked. "No, it's fine. I have enough epinephrine."

Thomas stared. His eyes were wide and dark and looking in them for too long made Jonathan feel a horrible sense of vertigo. Though that might have been more due to the fact that the sinks were moving closer and farther away from them. "Enough what?"

"Enough of the blue ones." Why was it that doing business with people incapable of processing four syllable words had never bothered him until he was an inmate? Principle, he supposed. He'd lost enough of his mind to the Batman, and if he didn't use what he had now, his brilliance would be down the tubes as well. But, unlike the pills that would have been in the pipes had he not arrived before Thomas, it wouldn't get caught in the U-bend. It would go straight to the sewers and be irredeemably coated in filth no matter how many times it was washed. "No one at the nurses' station saw you, did they?"

Thomas shook his head. His hair was longer than it had been when he was Jonathan's patient, nearly as long as the Joker's. It wasn't curly though, and perhaps as a result of that, Jonathan found that he had no inclination to pull it. "Elizabeth was working when I was there, and Jacob was hitting on her. He says he's not, you know. But he is."

"Really." The medications he needed and all the asylum's gossip, run through the filter of madness. Now if only his surroundings would obey the laws of physics, his own mind would be restored, and the laundry attendants issued him socks that were actually the same size as each other, life would be perfect. Or tolerable.

"He likes her hair. I thought you had a session now."

There had been a time when he'd found the rapid speed with which his less lucid patients changed topics intriguing. The mind's power over the body, and all of that. The mind's power of the body had been far less infuriating when it wasn't his mind telling him that the noises from the air vents were crows coming to peck out his eyes and that the dust in the corners of his room was actually asbestos. "It hasn't started yet."

"Teresa said they hypnotize you."

So he was a subject of gossip among the nurses, like the latest office romance or that oblivious nurse who kept wearing the world's most hideous skirt. Jonathan had expected it after the time he spent in the infirmary. Something of that caliber didn't happen, or at least wasn't reported—_and if you don't talk about it you can all pretend it never happened_—every day. That was a legitimate topic of conversation, even if the conversation was distorted and expanded until it bore as little resemblance to the facts as a tabloid article. That was what his life had become, a blurb that would find itself at home between "Health Secrets of World's Oldest Monkey" and "Clinton Hires Three-Breasted Intern."

Sometimes the world seemed unbearably awful. Particularly after discovering that the staff had moved from gossiping about legitimately sensational parts of his life to what sort of therapy he was receiving. People needed to just die. Die, or become either test subjects or research assistants. That wouldn't solve all the world's problems, but it would be a start. "Yes. Did you have the c—"

The door opened.

"Jonathan?" Brooks, of course. Jonathan had all but lost his sense of time, but if he had to guess, he'd say that he'd been in the restroom longer than necessary. "Are you all right?"

He nodded, praying not to any particular deity but to anything that would listen that Thomas wouldn't say something about how he'd hit his head. The last thing he needed was to be dragged to the infirmary and have the pills discovered and give the nurses more to talk about and get bothered by ice cold stethoscopes. Jonathan couldn't conceive of a faster way to make this a Bad Day, unless the Joker showed up to further taunt him with surreal art. Or maybe it would be poetry this time.

Thomas didn't. It was almost enough to make him become religious, if religion didn't remind him of Georgia and his great-grandmother and every terrible thing in the history of the universe, from the Inquisition to the common cold and a lot of other things that didn't, to the extent of his knowledge, have anything to do with organized faith. Not on the surface. Anyway, even without past experiences, it wasn't as if he knew which, if any, deity had answered. So no religion, not unless the skies parted the heavenly host restored his sanity. At which point, he'd give serious thought to conversion, if only because he'd finally have the attention span to do so.

"Come on, all right? We'll be late."

He looked back at Thomas. Thomas shook his head. Jonathan took that to mean "No, I don't have it" and not "I'm shaking my head for an entirely unrelated reason."

"Come on, Jonathan."

Jonathan started toward the door.

"See you at lunch, Dr. Crane." Jonathan took at as code for "I'll get it and give it to you then." Hopefully that would be more than wishful thinking.

"See you then."

* * *

"I wouldn't let that guy hypnotize me."

There were strands of long, blond hair on the back of Karen's shirt. Lucy reached out to remove them, trying to focus on that and not her words. How they'd gotten on the subject of Dr. Strange, she wasn't sure and she was fine with no knowing. It brought to mind Dr. Crane, and the change in his treatment they'd made to accommodate hypnotherapy. Maybe it was helping him, but he was sullen and withdrawn as ever, and it seemed more likely that they'd shaken things up because they didn't know what to do.

"I mean, if they'd hired somebody who doesn't look like he's going to tie you to a train track? Maybe," Karen continued. They didn't seem to know what to do with her either, losing weight and hair despite their efforts. "Have you heard his accent? Where's he from, anyway?"

"You know, accents aren't an indicator of personality." Victoria turned the page of her magazine, foot swinging back and forth against the couch. The model on the cover was so poised and thin and serene-looking. Lucy wished she could say the same. She was frazzled and stressed with a stomach full of empty calories, trying to resist the urge to shove her friend off the arm of the couch.

"Well, not by themselves, no. But tell me the guy doesn't look like he ought to be a cartoon supervillain."

How was it possible to be such close friends with someone and still want to duct tape her mouth shut? Lucy supposed it was like the old adage about how people loved their families even if they didn't like them. And this was the closest to a family that she had.

Well, that was the most depressing thought she'd had all week.

"Have any of you seen a pack of cigarettes?"

She knew it was Lotter before she looked up. If the man had ever gone a day without setting his smokes down somewhere and forgetting them, Lucy hadn't been there to witness it. She let her gaze linger on his old, beat-up shoes for as long as she could without making it obvious that she was avoiding him. He could tell when people were, and she'd bet money that he got off on it. She'd also bet money that he was a drug addict, given how the man seemed incapable of staying still and the frequency of his "smoke breaks."

"No," said Karen, suddenly very focused on reading over Victoria's shoulder. It had been Karen who told her than Lotter had felt up Allison Meers in the hallway last week. Or so Allison said. She was a pathological liar, from what Lucy had seen in group.

Lotter sneered at her. "You sure?"

Victoria looked up, and if the hulking ox of an orderly intimidated her, she didn't show it. "If you lose them that easily, maybe you shouldn't take them out of your pocket."

His smirk disappeared, and he turned to walk away. Lucy was naïve enough to think that would be the end of it, and looked back at Victoria's magazine, reading the cover features. She didn't see Lotter stop a few steps away, but she did hear his words, unmistakably aimed in their direction.

"Fat ass."

And then he was gone.

Tensing, Lucy turned to Victoria. For once, her friend was without a smart remark. Or any remark. Her face was pale, eyes glistening with tears—Lucy had never seen her cry, not until now, just as she had never seen her without a comeback—and before Lucy could think of anything to say she was standing, ignoring her friends' calls to her retreating back, and running across the room to the nurses. She must have asked for an escort out, because in less than a minute, she was through the door.

Dr. Crane came immediately after, before the door had time to swing shut. Lucy didn't bother to follow his progress around the room as usual—he'd always wander a bit before he came to the couch—too shell-shocked to make the effort. She glanced at Karen, also uncharacteristically silent. Neither of them spoke. What was there to say?

The cushions shifted beside her, but for once she'd didn't turn to Dr. Crane, mind racing with all the things she should have said, either to Victoria or that bastard of an orderly, stomach twisting and threatening to force out all the food she'd forced in at lunch. The three of them sat in complete silence for at least five minutes, and over her shoulder she heard one of the orderly's report that he'd found Lotter's cigarettes, on the magazine rack right beside the door.

* * *

AN: The crew of _Star Wars _smeared Vaseline on the camera lens to hide the wheels of Luke's "landspeeder."

The newspaper headlines Jonathan mentions are real, taken from the (sadly) cancelled tabloid _Weekly World News._


	25. You're So Condescending

AN: I had all of spring break to hammer out twelve pages of short story, so of course I crammed it all into the last three days. At this point in my life, I think I'm flat out incapable of learning from my procrastinating ways. In other news, due to classes, you probably won't see me again until Saturday.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Oh, you're so condescending, your gall is never ending; we don't want nothing, not a thing from you.

Your life is trite and jaded, boring and confiscated, if that's your best, your best won't do."

—"We're Not Gonna Take It," Twisted Sister

The orderlies had stopped chasing Gilda.

The Joker didn't know when that had happened. One day, she'd been diving between cars and bushes and altogether reenacting a one dog version of "The Great Escape," and the next, she'd been jumping onto his lap and licking at his straitjacket for the entirety of his time outdoors. And it _had_ been from one day to the next. The Joker may be unsure of the date, but if the orderlies had stopped fighting the good fight, it would have to be because of an order. If the gorillas that flanked him were anything like the ones that visited his cell in the night shift—and as far as he was concerned, they were interchangeable—then they wouldn't be about to let bruised egos or repeated trials to no effect counter the magnificent force of their pigheadedness. They could split their skulls against the curb diving after Gilda, and they'd still limp into work the next morning with a bandaged head and a strengthened resolve.

It was funny when it was people kicking him in the stomach at night. When they were cutting into his Gilda time, it just pissed him off.

Gilda put her front paws against his shoulder and raised herself up to lick his face. Her tail was wagging back and forth against his knee, and he twisted his other leg out from underneath the dog so that he could pet her as well as was possible with his arms forcibly crisscrossed over his torso. The Joker had decided that he was not a fan of straitjackets, bondage potential aside. He ought to mention that to Ruth again. He'd almost entirely stopped complaining about it—except on Thursdays—after he'd been let out of it during sessions, but it was severely impeding his doggie-snuggling sessions, and Ruthie needed to do something about that.

After all, she must have been the one to make the apes leave Gilda alone.

It wasn't that Gilda had grown on her. Ruthie was a fish person. Cat people, he could find a common ground with. Bunny people, even. But someone who chose a _fish _for comfort and companionship, out of all the animals available, legally or otherwise? Some said it was impossible to reason with sociopaths. The Joker found it impossible to reason with fish people. No, Gilda hadn't grown on Ruth. His doctor still looked disgusted every time the puppy licked his face, and seconds from vomiting whenever the Joker kissed back. She really wasn't all that good at hiding her own biases.

But personal feelings aside, they were speeding through his evaluation period like fire through the mob's finances. It would seem that she'd decided to leech onto anything that he reacted positively to, apart from yesterday when he'd gotten his hands on a box of crayons and decided to decorate the walls of his cell in green and violet. So maybe the removal of the straitjacket wasn't such an irrational wish after all.

"Where did you find those crayons, Joker?"

Last he checked, crayons were _washable. _There was no reason to be harping on about it a full day later. Ruth needed some sort of stress management program, or the opportunity to relieve tension by throwing a few grenades. Her blood pressure would get outright unhealthy otherwise. Dogs had the right idea. They didn't let anything affect them; not money, not class, not even hygiene. They could all learn from Gilda's example. "_Good _girl. Good puppy."

"Joker."

"What?" He lay back on the grass—Gilda jumped off his chest and took advantage of his new angle to lick at his skin with renewed vigor—and tried not to laugh at Ruth's frown. Her complete lack of progress with him had to be eating at her already. There was no reason to be cruel. Well, beyond his own amusement, but Ruthie was one of the few human friends he had in the asylum, and relations were strained as it was. "I found 'em, I colored, and the janitors washed it off. No harm done."

"I don't keep crayons in my office." She hadn't started breaking the filters off her cigarettes yet, so she hadn't completely fallen apart. "And neither does the infirmary. And the only other place you're out of the straitjacket besides your room is the showers. So unless you worked your way out of the straitjacket in the hall, while you were surrounded by orderlies, none of whom bothered to report it, and wandered around without being caught on camera, someone brought them to you."

He probably could squirm his way out of the straitjacket if he was so inclined. But that would be Inappropriate Behavior and mean no puppy time. The Joker sighed. "You got me. It was a Christmas gift from the Salvation Army."

"In June."

"Yep. I was as surprised as you are." He rolled away from Gilda, biting at his lips to keep from giggling. It might be written off as mad laughter, but he'd like to keep what little intimidation value he had left with Ruthie and not reveal that he was ticklish. Considering how much of his face was numb due to scarring, Gilda was remarkably adept at finding the sensitive spots.

Deprived of her playmate, the doggie trotted over to Ruth. The psychiatrist didn't offer so much as a pat on the head. How rude. The fleas weren't that bad. "I think that an orderly brought them to you."

"This may have es_ca_ped your notice, Ruthie, but the orderlies aren't as fond of me as, uh, you or Teresa or any of the other lovely nurses. They're not gonna go out of their way to give me presents." Gilda hovered around Ruth for a second more, dipping her head in rejection as she turned away. Two seconds later, she caught sight of the Joker and perked back up, her tail almost thrashing back and forth.

"No, I don't think they'd give you something because they thought you'd enjoy it." She crouched beside him, as close as Gilda, but not snuggling or licking or doing anything else fun, just staring at him as if boring her eyes into his face would reveal anything. How delusional. "I do think that you could frighten someone into bringing you things."

"It's good to know that you've come to trust me so _much_ in our time together." All right, so he'd been bored and Zachary had been right _there _to assure him that he'd fed Gilda tonight and the rec room with its crayons—triangular to keep them from rolling, and only _eight _per box, what a waste of a color spectrum—was just down the hall and he'd been so _bored_. Where did Ruth get off, strutting around on her high horse and acting as though he'd done something wrong?

"Are you going to tell me that you didn't?"

The Joker glared at her, which would have been a good deal more impressive were Gilda not licking at his eyebrows as he did. It wasn't the correctness that pissed him off; it was the _presumption. _They sat across a desk from each other for an hour and a half each day, took a few walks, and she assumed she could read his mind. Just on the little things, but as anyone with a paper cut exposed to lemon juice or kerosene would attest, sometimes the little things hurt the most. He may be stuck in Ruthie's gray little world, but his mind was his own private, Technicolor space, and _no one _else was privy to it, unless that someone else was wearing Kevlar armor and graphite bat ears. No one else was _worthy. _It would make him common, if she could understand him, ordinary. Which he wasn't, and she couldn't, and it was outright insulting to suggest otherwise.

Sometimes he wondered if Ruth could manage to look so composed after she'd been pushed headfirst down a flight of stairs. He usually had these thoughts at the same time he wondered how many angles her spine could bend at after that sort of damage. These thoughts usually came when he was alone in his cell, bored out of his mind, like an abrupt wave of fury that wanted to lash out at anything and everything in his path. Physically, that meant the walls. Mentally, it was anything, from the Batman to the cafeteria food to Ruth to his jumpsuit or to the feel of the floor. The waves had come outside of Arkham as well, but the tides hadn't been half as frequent or as lasting. So much for serving the mental health needs of the community.

Another swipe of Gilda's tongue pulled his hair over his eyes and Ruth pushed it back again. True, she pulled the hand sanitizer from her bag and wiped her hands free of dog saliva and hair grease seconds later, but he could appreciate the gesture. If he pushed Ruthie down the stairs Teresa and Linda probably wouldn't talk to him anymore, and his new doctor wouldn't let him see his puppy. And Ruth was amusing to talk to, when she wasn't laboring under the delusion that she had any insight. So it was for the best to keep her around, presumption aside.

* * *

"I'm walking down the hall." It was dream, over and done with, and when Jonathan was under, as he was now, his rational side had a chance to flourish without his mind racing too quickly for logic to catch up, so he was able to realize, for once, that it was only a dream. But real or not, his heart was racing.

Racing wasn't the right word. It wasn't as fast as it would be if he were fully awake, but it was faster than it ought to be in such a relaxed state. Hypnosis, he'd found, was something like having a cavity drilled under nitrous oxide. All the thoughts and worries were still there, but they were buried deep beneath a haze of calm that made it hard to remember what the fuss was. He wasn't dissociated from his body, not exactly—he maintained enough insight into his condition to realize that—but he didn't really _feel _it, not as he would when awake. There was an idea of location and weight, but the heartbeat stood out, and the heartbeat threatened to clear the haze that kept all the awful things under the surface, where they didn't hurt as much.

"Breathe, Jonathan."

Jonathan breathed, listening to his heart, trying to will it to follow the tempo of his breathing. It didn't, but it did slow.

"Where are you now?"

"I'm by the broom closet." His breath caught, heartbeat flooding back to its prior speed. He knew he was lying in a chair, that much he could feel, but at the same time, he was in the hall, by the closet that the janitors never locked, that had no smoke detector, that always smelled of nicotine. There were noises from within, like chalk scratching across a blackboard or talons on skin or nails raking over drywall, and he didn't want to be near them. He wanted to run, but he couldn't bring himself to move in front of the door and his feet wouldn't leave the spot when he tried to turn.

"What's special about the broom closet?"

"It—" He couldn't say it. The sensation was beyond words. To anyone else it was just a room, as the basement of Arkham Asylum was only a basement, except to the patients that he'd escorted down when he still had his position, and that he'd exposed to his toxin. It was only a basement—only a broom closet—to them. But for those who knew what lurked beneath the surface—

"Jonathan?"

"I'm scared." Someone in the room shifted. He was surprised to find that he could hear such a subtle movement over his heart, which was now hammering.

"I'm going to raise your hand in a moment, Jonathan, and I want you to let all of its weight lie in my hand. Do you understand?"

"Yes." He felt a hand on his wrist, and knew that the contact ought to bother him, but with all the other anxieties threatening to wake him up entirely, he couldn't be bothered to care.

"When I let go, and you feel your hand fall, I want you to send a wave of relaxation throughout your body, from your head to your feet, all right? Breathe, and let your body relax."

He let go. Jonathan breathed. The haze thickened.

"Good. Now, I'm going to do the same with the other hand."

His opposite wrist lifted. There was a horrible electronic clanging and Jonathan's eyes flew open.

"I'm sorry." Joan dug into her purse and pulled out her cell phone as she stood. "My grandfather just had surgery this morning—I left the phone on for—thought it was on silent—I'll be right back." She was in the hall in a matter of seconds, the door clicking behind her.

Strange dropped his hand. The bit of his mind that wasn't fully awake—vastly in the minority and shrinking by the second—remembered that he should be relaxing, but the rest of him was too busy panicking that someone was touching him and that he'd allowed himself to be tricked into this _again _and that lunch had been overcooked today and Joan's skirt had been a shade too light to really match with her shirt and that he'd let himself be brought back into a nightmare. He was lying back one second and sitting rigidly upright the next, as far back as he could move from Strange without getting up from the chair.

"It's all right, Dr. Crane."

Jonathan had always thought, before he overdosed on his own toxin, that "seeing red" was only an expression. It wasn't. How dare Strange have the _gall _to mock him by calling him doctor? Hadn't he suffered enough? There was a noise outside that could have been Joan talking, or could have been a flock of birds, and all Jonathan could think of was how much he wanted the man to have his eyes pecked out and be left to bleed to death, preferably facedown in ditch water.

"May I ask what's significant about the broom closet?"

"I should think," said Jonathan, his voice so cold that he could feel ice in his throat, "that a medical _professional _would know that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

"True." He was so _calm_, so infuriating. Jonathan wished he could shatter the man's glasses and shove the shards into Strange's vocal cords. But that would scratch against Jonathan's fingers and he hated seeing his own blood. "But if the cigar occurs in more than one dream, then it tends to be something m—"

"Do you think that because you can get people to sit half-asleep in your office, it gives you some deeper insight into their psyche?" He had said that, hadn't he? That, and not "I hate that closet because it's where _it _takes unauthorized cigarette breaks"? He must have. He couldn't stop now, couldn't repeat to be sure, or he'd lose face in front of the man he was berating. "You must realize how unreliable your line of work is, unless you're a complete fool."

He shrugged. Damn him and his comfortable chairs. "It can be, yes, if the hypnotist's suggestions are not worded in a—"

"You speak as though _you're _above that. As if you've got some greater control. But you don't; it's nothing more than sleight of hand and the power of suggestion, not any power or talent of yours."

Something in Strange's face suggested that either the shadows were moving of their own volition again, or that he didn't like being told that he didn't have power. "Hypnosis _is_ in the mind of the patient, Dr. Crane. If you truly didn't want it to work on you, then I would be unable to put you into a trance. Clearly, that isn't the case."

Jonathan decided that the rest of the session would best be spent in the hall with Joan, even if there _were _crows lurking behind the door.

* * *

"Do you ever get tired of laying there like a pussy and letting us beat you?"

The Joker was tired of many things. The colors white and orange—were they _trying _to make these jumpsuits unforgivably hideous?—steamed broccoli, which the cafeteria served seemingly every other day, monitored showering, and yes, having people kick him in the ribs _ad nauseam._ But more than any of that, he was tired of Hadley's broad, sneering face.

He wanted to put his foot through the man's teeth. The Joker knew he could do it, if he tried, but he wanted the thanks he gave to his dearest friend and closest orderly to be exquisite and slow, perhaps drawn out over days. Anticipation was half the fun, so they said, and he wouldn't want to deprive Hadley a second of the experience. And if he tried it here, it would be two seconds of bliss before the other orderlies gave him worse. The pain wasn't bad, but the humiliation…

Besides, Hadley wanted someone to fight back, to feel helpless. The Joker didn't have a problem with supporting that sort of behavior in theory, but when applied to himself, it was quite a different story. "Nope. Does your lady ever get tired of your, uh, frosting the cake before it's baked?"

A fist to the head for that. In the back, where his hair would cover the bruises, but the force was enough to make him see double for a good five seconds. Of course Hadley wouldn't like an insult to his manhood. If the top dog couldn't pleasure a woman, how could he keep the pack in line? The Joker shook his head, giggling and ignoring the foot someone launched between his shoulder blades. "Thanks, I had an itch I couldn't quite reach."

"Laugh it up, _freak._ You're going to rot in prison until one of them puts you out of your misery, and no one in there's ever going be scared of a slashed-up fag like you." Another wide sneer. Hadley needed to floss much more thoroughly. "Scares you, don't it?"

_And again with the assumptions. _Beating him was one thing. Insinuating that someone so low could know his mind was an unforgivable offense. The Joker would have to take his teeth out one at a time for this.

* * *

AN: "We're Not Gonna Take It" (video. google. com/ videoplay?docid=-2469482454724947120&ei=B3ShS-HvEY6mqgKCmJywBg&q=we%27re+not+gonna+take+it+music+video&hl=en#) is by Twisted Sister, and one of those songs that I think most everyone knows. It is also greatness in musical form.

The things the Joker lists that dogs don't care about are things that weren't important to classical Roman and Greek Cynics, who named themselves after the Greek word for dog. The Joker is very much a cynic in the modern sense of the word, which is, I think, part of the reason why so many dog analogies are made to him in TDK.

The more I write Ruth interacting with the Joker, the more I see their relationship as something akin to an exasperated mom dealing with a severely behaviorally disturbed kid.


	26. Every Time I Fell for You

AN: Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I tried to do handstands for you, but every time I fell for you.

I'm permanently black and blue; permanently blue for you."

—"Bruises," Chairlift

There were words imprinted onto the Joker's flesh in purple, just below his collarbone, like a butcher's stamp on a cut of meat. But unlike a butcher's stamp, the marking on the clown's skin didn't give a date or a grade. Instead, it read "GOTHAM CENTRAL;" the words wrapped around another purple mark, this one circular. And unlike a butcher's stamp, the coloration wasn't from ink, but bruising. It was a perfect imprint of someone's class ring. For all the damage the Joker had inflicted on himself with his nails since being institutionalized, he didn't have any jewelry.

Teresa tried to keep her eyes away from it.

She pressed the stethoscope against his skin, hands almost steady, and the Joker pulled away.

"Does that hurt?" Teresa jerked her wrist back quickly enough to strain the muscles as her eyes scanned his body for an unblemished area. Nothing. All right, a not-so-blemished area. She put it against him again and he twitched, though not as much. It made Teresa cringe. She tried to avoid causing any patient unnecessary pain, but with the Joker, it was more than that. Hurting him was asking for retribution and then some. And beyond self-preservation, it made the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach all the worse.

"No, it's just free_zing._" He scowled down at the stethoscope, squirming like a child faced with a shot. Then he raised his head back to her, annoyance replaced with what could only be described as "bedroom eyes." He licked his lips. "Couldn't you, uh, _blow _on it first?"

"No. Hold still."

He went back to scowling. Pouting, really; if not for his scars, he would have looked boyish, almost innocent. He was so _young._ Teresa had been too unnerved by the fact that he was human at all under the face paint when they'd met to notice his age, but they must have been born around the same time. She didn't like to think of all the horrible things he'd managed to accomplish in less than thirty years. "What, you can't get a heartbeat unless I'm immobile?"

"I'm listening to your lungs and you don't breathe normally when you move like that." Teresa placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him. There was the usual moment of panic—_I'm touching a _serial killer _who specializes in blowing things up_—but at some point, that terror had subsided. The fear was still there, of course—it'd be suicide to lose it, even if the worst thing the Joker had done in his time here was try to go without pants—but it didn't interfere with her ability to do her job, as it had on her first day dealing with the clown.

The emotion she found herself struggling to restrain the most these days was pity, suicidal as that was.

"I can move and breathe at the same time." His eyes tracked the stethoscope's movements. "Now, if you gave me some in_cen_tive—"

"Hold still." Teresa decided against applying pressure to his shoulder, half because it would be like throwing rocks at a sleeping bear and half because his shoulders were every bit as bruised as his torso. She'd never seen the orderlies go on for this long before. She never wanted to see it again.

She could still remember the first time she'd realized where the bruises on her patients came from.

It wasn't always the orderlies. There was no way to tell which bruises she found in the physicals were self-inflicted, or caused by other patients. The orderlies didn't do it to everyone, and for the unlucky few that did catch their eye, the abuse happened once or twice and then they lost interest. They knew how far they could go before they'd cause serious damage or draw attention to themselves, and they didn't cross that line. No one reported it because there was no proof, and besides, there was some unspoken understanding that no one _wanted _to work at Arkham Asylum, and if the few that chose to be here needed to work out their stress on the patients, it was still better than having no orderlies at all.

So it had been explained to her, after she'd had a patient whisper the source of the markings to her during an examination. She could remember the doctor's words exactly, as he'd filled her in after she'd tried to write out an incident report. His impassive expression, his steady voice, and the way his eyes had never quite met hers as he tried to justify it. She'd gone on her lunch break immediately after and spent the entirety of it in her car, staring at the red brick of the asylum and trying to make all of her medical training fit with what she'd been told. She'd almost thrown up on the dashboard.

Teresa thought she had adjusted.

She still flinched whenever she saw injuries hidden under clothing—most violent patients lacked the reasoning to conceal their outbursts—still felt the urge to retch when she heard rumors about an orderly leering or worse at patient. But no one ever found anything on the security tapes, or it would have been reported, so there wasn't any proof. And if as many were in on it had been implied to her, reporting it wouldn't do a thing, except maybe mark her as a target should any disciplinary action be taken. Teresa had tried to console herself with the knowledge that she was caring for the abused as best she could.

The excuse had worked until the morning they'd brought Jonathan Crane into the infirmary.

"Ter_e_sa." The Joker pronounced her name as if it had a "z" in it. She realized she'd been staring off into space without actually listening to his lungs for a good minute now, and removed the stethoscope, checking off the "respiration" box on the form.

"Yes?"

He was shifting around the examination table again, this time from boredom. "Can't we skip all the _bor_ing stuff and get to the good parts?"

Teresa remembered all too well what he thought of as the "good parts," much as she'd tried to block it out. "You're not old enough to need your prostate checked."

"That's a matter of opinion, considering that, uh, no one actually knows my age." He pulled his shirt down and she felt a flood of relief. "Anyway, I still get to turn my head and cough."

She silenced him by sliding a thermometer in his mouth. The attack on Jonathan had been horrible enough. He'd been unable to walk once it was through. It was the only assault she'd ever treated that had been severe to be reported and that alone spoke volumes about its brutality. She _had _thrown up over that one, albeit later that day, when she'd gone home and had eaten something that hadn't particularly agreed with her. But it had been the thought of Jonathan Crane's violation that pushed her over the edge.

In a way, what they were doing to the Joker was just as bad, if only for the sheer length that it was carrying on.

It shouldn't bother her this much. The Joker was a _murderer._ He'd almost blown up the ferries—ferries with her _friends _onboard—he _had _blown up Gotham General, and that building on 52nd Street with Harvey Dent's fiancé inside, and burned Dent before the Batman had finished him off. He deserved whatever he got from the orderlies and then some, and as far as Teresa could tell, he wasn't even sorry. His treatment wasn't anything he wouldn't get in prison—in Blackgate, it would be much _worse,_ considering that he tried to blow up the prisoners—and after all the suffering he'd caused, she ought to feel vindicated.

But it was one thing to say that about a hypothetical situation. It was another when it was someone she'd spoken to, someone who'd never threatened her or anyone else in the asylum that she knew of. It was different when she could see the bruises.

The fact that it didn't make _sense _to feel sorry for him didn't make it any less miserable.

The orderlies had never gone on this long. It wasn't that she couldn't understand why _the Joker _would make them want to lash out, but when it was going on for a presumably nightly basis for over a month, it ceased to be lashing out. It was calculated abuse, and deserved or not, everything she'd ever been taught about nursing screamed that it was wrong. Yes, Jonathan Crane had poisoned the city's water, and yes, the Joker had done everything in his power to tear Gotham to ruins, and maybe this was all well-deserved karma, but it didn't feel like retribution.

It felt like torture.

She took advantage of his thermometer-enforced silence to examine his eyes and ears, and to record his blood pressure. The guilt was more manageable when he wasn't talking. Teresa had never seen the Joker voluntarily shut up, so in the rare occasions that he _was _silent, it was easier to pretend that she was dealing with someone else entirely.

This could be the last time she'd see the Joker.

The physicals were monthly, and this was his third month; the month when his evaluation period ended and Ruth would have to make a case for his insanity—or lack thereof—in front of the courts. Two weeks from now, and the general consensus of the break room gossip was that unless she found some great insight into the Joker's psyche in those two weeks, she'd be coming to court empty handed. So more likely than not, unless he caught the flu or was beaten beyond his ability to conceal it in the next fourteen days, this would be the last time he sat in the infirmary. Teresa tried to take comfort in that fact.

Comfort felt more like self-disgust than anything else today. And much as she couldn't settle her stomach, she couldn't block the nagging thought that the Joker _could _be found insane and brought straight back to Arkham Asylum.

How long would the orderlies keep this up then?

Teresa had tried to reconcile her views of the abuse, turn it into something more palatable. She'd told herself that they only went so far—Jonathan had proven that wrong—that they didn't target the same patients repeatedly—obviously, the Joker's treatment blew that out of the water—and that in a place as miserable as Arkham Asylum, people did what they had to in order to make it through the day. She tried to think of the unknown abusive orderlies as allies on the battlefield; she disagreed with their choices, but they all worked together to make it through.

But if everyone was together in this, why did she seem to be the only one on the verge of developing stomach ulcers?

The thermometer beeped, and she slid it out of his mouth, recorded the temperature.

"Do I have a fever?"

"No." Thank God; she wouldn't have been able to handle it if she'd had to keep him any longer than the physical. "I need you to stand up and remove your pants."

She might as well have told him that Santa Claus was outside the door handing out free grenades, from the way his eyes lit up. "Whatever you say, Teresa."

But she wasn't saying anything, and that was the problem.

* * *

"Here."

Dr. Crane stared at the paper cup Lucy held out to him, regarding it as if it was full of bleach instead of water. His hands clenched around the book within them—_The Count of Monte Cristo_, which he'd been reading for the past week without making any progress in terms of pages turned—though he kept his eyes on hers for once. Usually, he focused on the pages or stared in a different direction every time she'd tried to speak with him.

"It's water. From over there." She pointed to the water cooler bolted to the floor in the corner of the rec room, and moved the cup in the other hand closer to him. "Go on. It's for you."

He glanced to his other side, probably confirming that the couch was still there and that he didn't have anywhere else to go unless he brushed past her. Dr. Crane didn't look like he believed it was water, either.

Lucy had made a resolution at breakfast, as she used to do back when she had sessions with Dr. Crane. In those days, it had been things like setting a goal for how many calories she'd consume or which magazines she'd limit herself to reading, because she inevitably wound up comparing herself to the models. Today it had been "get Dr. Crane to have a conversation." Lucy liked to think that the doctor would approve if he knew what she was up to. He'd always told her problem wasn't a lack of initiative, but too much of it focused in an unhealthy direction. And now he was doing that; channeling all of his energy into remaining silent. Even if he wasn't speaking to her, Lucy knew enough from asylum gossip to know that he needed to be speaking to _someone._

That, and she really missed talking to him.

Dr. Crane didn't say anything. He tried looking back down at the book, but after a moment of staring at the pages without reading while she stood beside him, arm outstretched, he gave up and raised his head again.

"It's just water."

"Wh—" He cleared his throat and started again, and if his expression was anything to go by, he'd rather be swallowing live eels. "Why did you bring it?"

Her knees began shaking from a combination of excitement and sheer terror. She'd _hoped _that he would speak, but she hadn't really expected it. Now that Dr. Crane had spoken, the explanation she'd planned went out of her head the moment he closed his mouth, and the change in their usual interactions made her feel as if she'd been sitting on a see-saw with her feet firmly on the ground, and someone had come along and dropped a huge rock on the other side. "I—you looked thirsty."

Going by Dr. Crane's expression, she might as well have responded in Portuguese. There was no look of comprehension on his face, and it was just as well, because he hadn't looked thirsty. He'd looked worried and shaky and spent most of the time since he'd come into the rec room staring at Lotter, who'd once again misplaced his cigarettes. He always shook more than ever when he saw the orderly, and Lucy had her own gut-wrenching theory as to why. But it was only a theory. She couldn't accuse without proof, and after what he'd said to Victoria—and what he'd done to Jonathan—she couldn't risk bringing that onto herself. As if they'd believe her word over his, anyway. "Oh," he managed, and then mouthed it again. "I wasn't."

"Ah." She lowered the cup, but only slightly. "Well, I'm not either. Are you sure you don't want it?"

He gave the paper cup another grave look; like he was contemplating some great philosophical question instead of whether or not he wanted a swallow or two of water. It was a simple yes or no, but it was beyond him, and that made Lucy want to reach out and hug him even more than the silence and the shaking and the spending time with Thomas Schiff had. She was about to take the cup away, then pat him on the shoulder and tell him it was all right anyway, when Dr. Crane moved one hand that was just this short of steady off of the book and slowly, very slowly moved it toward the water.

"I'll be back in five minutes."

Dr. Crane stiffened. Lucy didn't need to raise her head to recognize Lotter's voice, but she did anyway, and watched as the orderly, having recovered his cigarettes, strode out the door. He took more breaks than any reasonable—and decent—human being needed, and he was way too energetic for someone who worked double shifts. She'd bet a week's worth of meals that he was on something other than nicotine.

She looked back down, and Dr. Crane, looking paler than ever and still stiff as a board, had latched both hands onto the book again, eyes so focused they were almost burning into the pages.

Lucy sighed and sat beside him, taking a sip of the water, now lukewarm. She'd had more than one doctor tell her that her eating habits weren't a way to improve herself, but a self-inflicted punishment, and she was beginning to wonder if the same wasn't true of her personal interactions.

* * *

"You're not trying to bribe the Joker with candy, are you?" Joan raised a brow, tilting her head toward the box of chocolates on the table.

"Of course not." Ruth didn't say that she'd given serious thought to crushing up pills and hiding them inside said chocolates, in a last ditch attempt to see if the Joker's condition improved under medication before her time with him was up, only to realize at the last moment how unethical of a plan it was, and how much damage she'd do to what little connection she had with the man if he found out. And also because she'd tried crushing up an aspirin as a test, and not only had the nougat center failed to block the bitter taste, but there was also no way to hide that the candy had been tampered with. "They were a gift and I'm trying to avoid empty calories."

"So now you're tempting the rest of us." Joan sat opposite her, glancing over the list on the lid. "They have dark chocolate with raspberry?"

"You're welcome to it." Ruth considered her options and decided that, satisfying as it seemed, slamming her head against the table repeatedly wouldn't do her any favors and would likely give her a migraine besides.

She had nothing. Well, a handful of unproven hypothesizes, but nothing concrete. Nothing to convince the courts that the Joker was more than a few cards short of a full deck and that he needed treatment, not electricity through the brain or imprisonment for life. Part of it was genuine concern. She'd always prided herself on her ability to separate her patients from her personal life, but the Joker had a way of seeping in when she didn't want him there like carbon monoxide. She hadn't forgotten what he was capable of, or his lack of remorse. But while she didn't have proof, Ruth _knew _something was wrong with him. His outburst over his scars hadn't been an act, and neither had his withdrawn state after she mentioned Batman.

Ruth was sure of it, and as long as he had those altered states of consciousness, he wasn't safe in a prison where the majority of the inmates would be out for his blood.

But beyond that, she simply did not want to lose.

Ruth had never had a patient she hadn't made some sort of progress with, even if it was as minimal as the disorganized schizophrenic she'd managed to counsel into making eye contact. She'd gone into psychiatry to help, yes, but also to _unravel. _To take whatever was in the minds of her patients that made them suffer, or made them a danger to others, and work at it, piece by piece, until they could operate smoothly again. And someone like the Joker was her Gordian knot. But unlike Alexander the Great, she couldn't just cut through it. She had to peel back the layers one by one and she didn't intend to let him go until she reached the center, even if that took the rest of her career.

But it wasn't as if she could go to the courtroom and say, "You can't have him yet; I'm not done solving the puzzle."

Ruth sighed and reached for the box.

"Avoiding empty calories, eh?" Joan's smile was warm and good-natured and Ruth couldn't muster up the energy to return it.

"Sometimes I need empty calories to make it through the day." She bit into a caramel crème, certain the Joker would laugh at that statement if he were there to witness it.

* * *

AN: "Bruises"(www. youtube. com/ watch?v=ZQ9hLOHj8ag) is another song I've mentioned in a previous fic. It was also used in an IPod commercial a while back, so you may have heard it before.

The Gordian knot refers to a legend in which Alexander the Great was faced with the Gordian knot, a ridiculously complex knot that he couldn't find the end to. So his solution was to cut it in half with his sword.


	27. My Secret Smile

AN: I was just caught outside without a jacket, in flip flops, in thirty degree weather because someone in the dorm burned waffles. We were stuck there for about twenty minutes despite everyone in the dorm knowing the cause and the fire truck leaving after the first two minutes. I don't feel like I happy camper anymore.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I must be silent, must contain my secret smile

I want to tell you, you my mirror, you my iron bars."

—"No One Knows My Plan," They Might Be Giants

"You brought the notebook."

It wasn't a question because said notebook was resting on the Joker's lap. His fingers were tapping against its cover as opposed to their usual place on the arms of the chair, or toying with the buttons of his shirt, or trying to rearrange the items on her desk before she slapped his hand away.

The Joker made no move to hand the notebook over, still tapping his fingers as he regarded her with barely narrowed eyes. "I heard you brought in chocolate for the staff today."

Curse the clown and his gift for derailing the conversation with a topic she couldn't just ignore. He hadn't been out of his cell, and she doubted the orderlies made friendly conversation with him. She glanced over his shoulder at Michael and Luke, standing in the space between the Joker and the door. Neither looked intimidated or nervous. Threatening his escorts for information wasn't out of the question, but if they were being coerced, there ought to be some hint. "Where did you hear that?"

"I've been experimenting with, uh, astral projection." His nonchalant expression didn't falter as he spoke. If the Joker didn't have a habit of irreverence, she might have taken any single statement at face value. Ruth knew she ought to find the constant, well-acted lying worrying. But after the first few weeks, it was more annoying than anything else. "But that's beside the point, Ruthie. I'm feeling re_ject_ed. What, you don't share candy with patients either?"

"No." Ruth imagined how much worse the Joker's teeth would look after making introductions with a box of assorted chocolates and fillings, and wished that she could blind her mind's eye at will. "And even if I did, I don't think sugar is something you need to consume in large quantities."

She'd never understand how he could pout so exaggeratedly, what with all the scar tissue. Either he'd practiced—which, knowing him, was likely—or he'd had at least a few years to adjust. "Since when are we trying diet therapy?"

"Let me see the notebook, Joker."

He did not, crossing his arms over his chest with a huff that would be more fitting from a small child who'd just had his favorite toy confiscated due to reasons of smacking the rest of the class over the head with it. "Friends are supposed to _share_, Ruthie. Not withhold assorted chocolates or, uh, correct grammar. Speaking of which, when do I see the Scarecrow again?"

"You don't." Ruth hadn't stayed to witness the aftermath of the Joker's taunt, but she took Joan's assurance that it hadn't been pretty. That would have been a heavy blow to the arrangement in and of itself, but add the fact that Jonathan had told Joan at some point in the last week of sessions that he didn't want to speak to the Joker again, and that was the final nail in the coffin.

The side of the Joker's mouth quirked. Again, a child missing his toy came to mind. "Come again?"

"You don't. He doesn't want to talk anymore, and Joan doesn't think it's healthy for him. Give me the notebook."

The Joker's lips—cracked and mistreated as ever—pursed, eyes tracking along the wall behind her. "We'll see about that."

Ruth didn't even want to try deciphering that one. "Joker. Notebook. Now."

"Christ, Ruthie." He straightened, with a hurt look that would have been convincing on anyone else, and thrust the book at her. "Patience is a virtue, ya know."

She grabbed it before he could change his mind, though she managed to gently pull it away once her hands were clamped down on it. "So is not giving your doctor prematurely gray hair."

The Joker leaned as far over the desk as the orderlies would allow—something he'd spent an entire session testing in the past—head tilting to the side as he did. "Well, the lighting in here sucks, but I don't see any gray. The _color's _fine, what you need to worry about is the—"

She put one hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into the seat. "Sit down."

"I was still _sitting_—"

Ruth tried to convince herself that she didn't hear his latest tangent as she flipped past the pages she'd seen the last time he'd given her the notebook. She didn't bother to check for updates on his list of rules. Whatever the nurses had told him about chewing with his mouth closed or throwing pillows at catatonics or anything else he got up to wasn't going to give her a new insight into his mind. But there was a chance, however slim, that the rest of his writing would.

Past the rules there were drawings filling pages that had only had sketches of Gilda in the margins when she last looked through the book. He hadn't been lying about _The Birth of Venus_—Ruth was less than amused to find that he'd redrawn it with herself in the title role and the nurses and an orderly in the others—though _The Rape _was missing. She flipped through the sketches—and past his "Serious Injury List"—to where the writing proper began.

_Didn't talk today today and Ruthie got pissed. Decided it wouldn't improve her mood if I told that I _had _to keep quiet because the whole thing was so sickeningly boring that I'd have thrown up all over her if I opened my mouth._

_the walls in the infirmary are the color of piss how is this possibly improving anybody's health_

_**The purpose of therapy is to help me reenter society. Society, as in "the drones running in and out of the anthill." I'd rather stay the kid with the magnifying glass, but thanks for offering.**_

_aLl ThE fLoWeRs WoUlD hAvE vErY eXtRaSpEcIaL pOwErS, tHeY wOuLd SiT aNd TaLk tO mE fOr HoUrS wHeN i'M lOnElY, iN a WoRlD oF mY OwN._

_Apparently, "Terrorize The Populace" Is Not A Good Goal For What I Want To Do If I Am Released. Neither is "Costumed Villainy." Neither Is "Starting A Flea Circus With Gilda As The Ringleader." I Have Come To The Conclusion That Goals Are No Fun._

_It's going to be really funny to watch all the plastic surgery Bruce Wayne's going to get as he ages. Wonder if he'll go with hair plugs or a toupee._

_This sentence serves no purpose._

_Dear BATMAN,_

_Do you still love me? Check one._

__Yes._

__No._

__Take me now, you suspender-wearing sex fiend._

_**i hope the laundry attendants are doing their duty, because i don't wear the boxers—steel wool is less itchy than those undergarments—and i don't think that exposing the other patients to joker juices is in line with the health code **_

_There once was a crime fighting bat_

_Who wore pointed ears on his hat_

_His armor had plates_

_And between them was space_

_I slipped knives into during combat._

_If you are reading this, and you're Ruthie, you're probably regretting giving me the notebook by this point._

_It __**is **__a scientific fact that morale in Arkham Asylum __**would go **__up by approximately twenty billion percent if Pizza Day __**was **__Every Day._

_.siht ekil etirw ot reisae eb dluow ti, rorrim a dah I fI_

_i miss my purple coat and my purple slacks and my green vest and my blue dress shirt and my multicolored socks and my pocket watch and my purple gloves and my lipstick and my eye shadow and my face paint and my brown shoes and my purple and gold tie and my green hair dye and my knives_

_**brightly colored pills**_

_**sure, they force you to smile but**_

_**isn't life more fun?**_

_On Entropy and Humanity's Attempts to Fight the Inevitable:_

_Once upon a time there were three sisters. The first sister was hardworking, organized, and careful in all that she did. The second sister was lazy, messy, and reckless. The third sister worked when it suited her and was idle when it did not, sometimes orderly and sometimes hasty. The three sisters lived beside a river, with the good sister's house on one side, the bad sister's house on the other, and the sister no one knew what to make of in the middle. The good sister and the bad sister often fought, which amused the middle sister greatly._

_One spring, heavy rain came to the sisters' village and the river began to rise. The first sister took every precaution she had been taught from their mother about flooding to protect herself and her home. The bad sister bribed the other villagers with promises of help in the future and crocodile tears to do the work for her. The third sister decided to take things as they came._

_The waters rose and when they receded, all three houses lay in shambles. The good sister had drowned trying to protect her house from damage, and the bad sister had drowned trying to retrieve her belongings._

_The middle sister, who fled from her house when it started to flood, lives alone now, and she likes her new home much better without all the bickering._

After that, there was a row of circles and rectangles, randomly combined, as if marking a border after the story. Ruth didn't read the text below it. There was an ache in her head that could be the start of a migraine. The Joker stared at her, his features struggling between excitement and apprehension with no clear victor in sight. There were a thousand and one questions running through her head and she went with the first one that fell to her lips. "Did you make up that story?"

His mouth contorted into a smile, eyes glimmering for the briefest second before his face switched to confusion. "I—uh, I might have."

"You might have?" It was definitely a migraine. "You must know one way or the other."

The Joker giggled. It made her head pound. "You really don't know much about me, huh Ruthie?"

* * *

The hardest thing was getting the correct amount of water.

The hardest thing _had _been concealing the pills from the orderlies, and to this day Jonathan wasn't sure how he'd managed it without divine intervention. His only secular explanation was that the orderlies were lax in their random searches, and hadn't thought to check inside his second pair of shoes or inside of the pillow. Not the case, but the pillow itself. Part of the cover had come loose. No one else had noticed. Maybe they'd seen the pills and left them, because they didn't want to take the time and effort to report it. Maybe they'd found it funny. Other patients traded drugs or various contraband items. If he'd known that as a doctor, the orderlies had to know. Bur for whatever reason they kept silent.

But the orderlies were gone now and it seemed that when Arkham had given his word, he actually meant it. Jonathan had taken to laying strands of hair on certain parts of the floor or items of furniture. Furniture being the bed, the only thing in the room besides himself, his books, his clothing, and the pills, but on occasion he liked to close his eyes and imagine he was back in the apartment he'd never really spent time in before his world had gone to hell in a hand basket—why a hand basket as opposed to a picnic basket or a flower basket was anyone's guess—where he had furniture and privacy and locks that kept the monsters out instead of trapping him inside with them. Jonathan thought that he probably would have frowned on such a coping mechanism back in the days when all the gears in his head spun in the same direction, but now he took comfort where he could.

Security blankets aside, the hairs hadn't moved unless the orderlies had taken note of their positions and moved them back to just the right spot, and Jonathan retained enough knowledge to know that the orderlies were too stupid for that sort of strategic planning. So they'd left his room alone.

The nighttime visits were over. They'd ended when he'd had to go to the infirmary and he never, never, ever wanted them to come back.

The water was the hardest now because his hands were shaking. All of him was shaking, like a wind-up doll that was supposed to spin but had broken down so badly that all it could do was shudder in place, over and over and someone kept winding the key. Obtaining the water was easy. Brooks never questioned that he wanted a cup of water every day after his morning session; had even reminded him to get one the other day when he'd been too distracted with being angry at Hugo Strange—that condescending balding bastard—to remember his plans for vengeance. Thomas made procuring the rest of the supplies easy as well; if he didn't have what was needed after the session, he always had it when they met in the rec room, and then Jonathan would just ask to go back to his room and pick out a book, and mix everything together then. If Brooks minded that his patient took upwards of fifteen minutes to choose a novel, or found it suspicious, he'd yet to mention it. Then again, it could all be par for the course considering that yesterday Jonathan had a panic attack in the hallway after someone had slammed a door especially loudly and it had taken half an hour for Brooks to calm him enough to move the remaining forty feet down the hall to Joan's office.

Too much water ruined the balance. It soaked through the paper wrapping and made things obvious. But too little wouldn't adhere the powder of the crushed pills to the insides. Jonathan couldn't work with the powder alone; it would drift straight out. And then nothing would work at all. Satisfied with his work and the rate of drying, he slid the last one into the box, stood, and crossed the room to knock on the door.

After a pause of ten seconds or so during which Jonathan wondered if biological warfare hadn't killed off everyone else in the building and left him trapped to slowly starve in his room, the door opened, with Brooks, uninjured, as far as Jonathan could detect, from biological warfare. "Hey. Do you want to go to the rec room?"

Jonathan was struck by the sudden and overpowering urge to say no, not so much from fear of detection as from curiosity. He'd never said no before, because it would counterproductive to his plans. What did his orderly do if he said that? Did he get to go on break, or did he just have to stand there for hours until lunch or Jonathan's next session or whenever Jonathan knocked on the door again to ask to leave? He used to know, he used to lecture the orderlies on protocol when he caught them shirking.

They hadn't liked him for that. For many things.

He had to force himself not to shake his head no, and force even harder to stammer out a yes.

"Okay. Let's go."

Jonathan wondered if it had been lectures of asylum policy that had motivated it to assault him.

It hadn't always been a monster, as far off in the distant, mentally stable past as that had been. Once it had just been an orderly, an orderly who slipped off to the janitor's closet to have a cigarette when he'd exhausted the number of breaks allowed, an orderly who decided that procedure came second to his own gratification. A sadistic orderly, who leered at some patients and was too rough with others and that Jonathan had only kept employed because he didn't want to jump through the hoops to fire the man.

None of the orderlies had liked him, but he and it had clashed more than he had with anybody else. And when he came here to be fixed—locked up and hidden away—they'd all returned the favor, kicking and hitting and hurting for a week straight until he was as black and blue as the painting the depressed patients made in art therapy. After a week, they'd gotten bored, or feared breaking him. Whatever the reason, they backed off.

But it didn't.

And it had crossed the line none of the others had touched. Jonathan didn't think it had been an issue of sex. Power, dominance, humiliation. Even torture. But not sex. And it had broken him, maybe even as much as the toxin.

Jonathan wanted to return the favor.

Brooks opened the door to the rec room. Jonathan stepped inside and lingered by the doorway, despite his orderly's attempts to coax him further into the room. After a moment, Brooks shrugged and crossed to the chairs along the opposite wall. Jonathan waited until the orderly's eyes were no longer on him, glanced to make sure that it wasn't watching, and then took its pack of cigarettes from his pocket and set them on the magazine rack before he walked to the couch.

* * *

AN: This is "No One Knows My Plan": www. youtube. com/ watch?v=k90Xc_KhdBA

The bit in the Joker's notebook about talking flowers is from Disney's _Alice in Wonderland _cartoon.

His story_, _I made up, but it was heavily inspired by the children's books from the manga/anime _Monster_, which I highly recommend you give a read/watch. That series has a set of nihilistic children's books which teach messages such as "no matter what you chose, you're screwed" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=O9u_T0ARFv0) "no matter what good you do, you're evil inside" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=epC71UrPcgg&feature=related) and "even if you get what you want in life, you'll never be happy." (Which starts at 4:05 in this clip, because the story clip was removed from Youtube due to copyright claims: www. veoh. com/ collection/ Temma/ watch/ v9208309RaaKpW4#).


	28. Where Your Eyes Don't Go

AN: There are a few authors I've been meaning to recommend for a while now, but keeping forgetting to actually mention in an author's note, so here I go. They're all on my favorite author's list, so check it out when you're through here. The first is Night Monkey, who's managed to perfectly convey both the comic Scarecrow (in _Nerd _and many other fics) and the film Scarecrow in _Plausibility_, which is probably my favorite of her works. The next is Toccata No. 9, who has written loads upon loads of Batman fics that I haven't read nearly enough of myself. I know I recommended J-Horror Girl way back when in my first or second fic, but I haven't mentioned her since she started her Scarecrow fic _The Secrets of Scary People_, which is pure awesomeness. And lastly, remember GreyLiliy's _Burlap _that inspired my one shot _Leporiphobia_? Well, it has a prequel now, _Concrete_, and the prequel is great too.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms and does a parody of each unconscious thing you do,

When you turn around to look it's gone behind you; on its face it's wearing your confused expression,

Where your eyes don't go."

—"Where Your Eyes Don't Go," They Might Be Giants

One week until he was due in court.

Ruthie had confiscated the notebook after a week of wasted sessions questioning him about it all meant. Whether that was because she was struggling to decipher it on her own or because she was sick of his writing was open for interpretation. The Joker guessed the latter. Well, true art was never appreciated in its time, was it?

She could have let him keep the marker. Writing had made the hours confined in his cell more bearable, but without the notebook, life had snapped back to comatose so quickly the Joker was sure he'd heard the sound barrier break. He'd tried jumping on the futon. It didn't bounce. He'd slammed himself against the walls for a while, but he got enough of that at night. He'd already braided and unbraided every lock of hair on his head three times. And that was just this morning.

It seemed that Jonathan had been serious on the "not talking to Joker" thing, which didn't help matters in the slightest.

The Joker considered braiding his hair again. Or tearing it out. That would probably get him taken out of the cell, provided that anybody knew what he was up to. Which they didn't, what with the padded door and its tiny little window with the wire mesh between the panes of glass that no one ever looked through, save for the orderlies at night keeping guard to ensure that they wouldn't be caught in the act.

Two days without the notebook, and the orderlies' visits were starting to look preferable in comparison. The Joker wouldn't deny that he had masochistic tendencies, but those fell under the sort of masochism that involved handcuffs and candle wax and floggers, not letting himself be degraded by people who weren't fit to lick the dirt from his spats. Looking forward to his next little excursion with Hadley, if only to break up the monotony, was a Very Bad Sign indeed. Arkham Asylum was meant to cure mental illness, not cause it.

He really needed to get around to that strongly worded letter of complaint.

The Joker lay back on the futon and closed his eyes. At least it was a Monday, which meant Ruth, which meant a session. Saturday and Sunday, when she went home for the weekend—he'd never thought about the doctors _leaving _before he got here; they ought to live in the building, like teachers did in schools—had very nearly finished him off. He'd made it through Saturday night by forcing himself to vomit and spending all of two hours in the infirmary before Linda had decided that if he was well enough to beg for a bite of her granola bar, he was well enough to sleep in his own bed. That bitch.

He breathed; tried to force his racing thoughts out with his exhalations. It didn't work as it hadn't on Sunday, or Saturday, or Friday after Ruth had taken the notebook. The Joker was simply incapable of blocking out the outside world. Even in moments of absolute focus, he didn't eliminate any detail of his surroundings. Rather, they became more vibrant and, for once, not black and white. He could remember the color of every car on the street when the Batman had come barreling toward him on his motorcycle, as he could remember every crack in the pavement and the clothing of every gaping bystander. Not that there had been many of them who hadn't turned tail and fled at that moment. He remembered the feel of the gun barrel the Commissioner had pressed against his neck just as he remembered every snag of the blade on the inside of his cheek when his smile had permanently widened.

Trying to ignore his boredom made it all the more grating.

His eyes flew open, fingers twisting through hair he had to struggle not to rip out. What he wouldn't give to talk to someone, even if it meant Jonathan Crane correcting his pronunciation. Hell, he'd sell his soul for a room with a window. A window, and a pair of glasses. That was all he needed to entertain himself for hours. Light from the window plus the focusing of the light by the lenses of the glasses equaled futon on fire, which, by extension, meant fire alarms blaring, an evacuation of the entire asylum, and more entertainment than he'd had in weeks. But no, that would just be too much to ask.

The Joker sat up, planning to devote the next few minutes to glaring at every inch of the room and declaring his hatred for it and everyone involved in its creation. His eyes fell first on the toilet and that plan was quickly abandoned. Fire was out of the question, but water…he dropped his gaze to his shoes, then back to the toilet. Water could be just as fun, and he intended to make it so.

* * *

The door to the rec room opened.

Jonathan tensed with equal parts excitement, fear, and a reflex he'd had for as long as he could remember, though he couldn't say if it had been his great-grandmother or the birds had caused it, only that he did _not _like hearing noises behind him, even if he knew what it was. And there was no way to be sure _what _it was, really. Yes, it sounded like a door, but that didn't mean anything. Maybe he was hearing something large and metal was being dragged across the floor. Maybe it had come back into the room. Maybe the birds had learned to imitate the sounds doors made. Crows could do that just like parrots.

He suppressed a shiver without knowing quite how he managed that and beside him, Lucy gasped. Jonathan turned to the door.

It hadn't come in. But the Joker had.

That couldn't be right. Had the nurses given him the medication this morning? Jonathan had thought so, but blurred as the days were—wake up, drugs, breakfast, shower, session, rec room, drugs, lunch, session, rec room, dinner—he had no way to be sure. He _was _sure that the Joker would not, under any circumstances, be allowed near other patients that weren't named Jonathan Crane and weren't part of a controlled visit, and he especially wouldn't be brought into the rec room in the middle of the day. Not unless Jeremiah Arkham had started heavy drug use in the past week, and though Jonathan couldn't articulate exactly why, he doubted that was the case.

They hadn't given him the medication, then. Still, if Jonathan knew anything these days, he knew chemistry, and he shouldn't have started hallucinating yet. Seeing a fully-formed, solid, ill-mannered clown was different than seeing shifting doorways or changing light patterns or fog where there wasn't. Yet again he felt the urge to reach out and touch the Joker, run his fingers over the scar tissue and pull on his hair, ensure that he was _real._

But he wasn't. The idea was ridiculous.

"What's he doing _here_?" Lucy was clinging to him, not patting or putting a hand on his shoulder, but clinging, hands clamped to either arm as if he was a shield. She was whispering and her hands were shaking. "And what happened to his clothes?"

The Joker's pants were soaked from the knee down, and his shoes missing. There were wet spots on the floor from his socks and from the shoes of the orderlies dragging him which seemed to sparkle under the lights like an oil spill. Jonathan stared at the water, transfixed, until another set of shoes stepped into his line of sight. He looked up to find an orderly leading another patient, cuffed and the ankles and wrist-belted as the Joker had been, and both of them wet from the ankles of their pants down. There was another pair behind that. _They're evacuating the high-security ward._

Only the Joker had water up to his knees. Then again, the level of water on the Joker's pants now seemed ever-shifting, so Jonathan could only guess that it reached that high at all. Flooding, but that didn't explain why they were here. High security patients mingling with the lower security had violence and lawsuits and torn uniforms and scuffed tiles written all over it. They ought to be in the visitor's room, or shoved in a broom closet, or somewhere else far, far away.

Then again, was it visitor's day? Lucy had come in later than usual, pale and trembling and while he'd attributed it to her routine being thrown off by some delay—or possibly symptoms of cholera, but she didn't look dehydrated enough for that—that was how she'd reacted whenever he talked to her after conversations with her family. And the rec room was emptier than usual, by over half. Either Arkham's release rate had tripled quite literally overnight, or most of the patients were in the visitor's lounge.

If all the patients in the high security ward needed to be moved and accounted for, only the rec room, the visitor's room, and the cafeteria could contain them all. The visitor's room and the cafeteria would be full of families of patients—but not his, which hadn't bothered to write or call since years before his arrest and whom he wouldn't want to see anyway—so of course the doctors wouldn't bring their most violent lunatics there. And with the orderlies and nurses busy transporting the high security inmates, the ordinary patients wouldn't be moved until everyone was accounted for.

Why was there flooding? The sprinkler system hadn't gone off, and to his knowledge, the showers hadn't broken. Short of a rainstorm starting up in the middle of a wing, Jonathan couldn't come up with an explanation that wouldn't be immediately dismissed as ridiculous.

They sat the Joker at a chair in the corner of the room, the corner farthest from the door and the nurses' station, and closest to the couch he and Lucy were seated on. One orderly held him secure while the other redid his ankle cuffs to strap him to the legs of the chair. They were off as quickly as they'd come—Jonathan found himself reminded of wind-up soldiers, for whatever reason—leaving the orderlies who'd been in the rec room already to watch the most dangerous inmates. They seemed to linger back from the Joker. Practical, if responsibility-shirking.

Lucy's hands clenched on his arms. It was starting to hurt. Maybe she'd pass out or squeeze tightly enough to damage the nerves, and then he wouldn't have to feel it anymore.

The Joker stretched his feet as far as they would go—which first looked like a centimeter, then an inch, then several inches, then an inch again—his wrists flexing as much as the restraint belt would allow. His eyes fell first on the arm of the couch, eying the long blonde hair left behind by Lucy's friend that Jonathan couldn't recall the name of and thus called Rapunzel. Then they met Jonathan's. "Hey, Scarecrow. Who's your friend?"

Jonathan didn't say anything. Lucy somehow managed to make her intake of breath painfully loud, to the point of making his ears ring. The Joker, because he was a manipulative, conniving bastard—as Joan had called him after their last conversation before hastily apologizing for her language and telling Jonathan to forget what she'd said—took this as encouragement, leaned as far forward as the restraints would allow, smiled as wide as he possibly could with the scar tissue and then some, and said, "Hey cutie. What's your sign?"

If Lucy applied any more pressure, she'd either pull his arm from its socket or tear it off entirely. Jonathan was sure that both possibilities would amuse the Joker to no end. He turned as much as he was able. "Lucy, I think that girl you talk to is trying to get your attention. Over there."

Her look of terror evaporated into confusion. Or illness; cholera was still a possibility. Jonathan jerked his head to the side, and she got the hint, though it still seemed to take her a period of several weeks to pry her fingers off and get off of the couch, let alone walk away.

"Protective of her, aren'tcha?"

Jonathan didn't dignify that with eye contact, let alone a response. Behind him, the couch shifted, and there was a voice by his ear. "Joker."

He jumped, thinking of it and the other orderlies that had visited his cell and birds that learned to mimic human speech and disgruntled mob bosses he'd provided drugs and cannibalistic tribes and everything else that could be beside him, heart racing to the point of dizziness even when the source of the voice leaned into his line of sight and he saw that it was Thomas Schiff. If not for the medication that regulated his blood pressure, Jonathan imagined he'd have died of a heart attack months ago.

"_Breathe_, Jonathan." Something that would have been concern if the Joker was empathetic enough to feel concern was on the man's face. His scars looked as though they were shifting under his skin as he spoke. "Paranoid schizophrenics aren't that scary."

"Birds are," Jonathan said without thinking.

"Birds." The Joker tilted his head in a distinctly avian fashion, and Jonathan fought the desire to cringe. The Joker would feed off of fear the same way that the monster secreted poison. "Uh, Jonny, we're _inside._"

"So?" He'd been inside a chapel in Georgia. That hadn't made a difference.

"So that's like worrying about, uh, tigers hiding in the nurses' station." The Joker shook his head in a way that was almost sympathetic, and Jonathan bit his lips to keep from shouting. What he'd shout, he wasn't sure, but he knew that he would.

"How did you get in the rec room?" Thomas's hand was on Jonathan's shoulder despite the several thousand reprimands Jonathan had given him about not touching unless it was to hand over pills or cigarettes. Jonathan couldn't bring himself to say anything about it, however, partly because Thomas was rapt with attention to the Joker's story and partly because he was busy looking at the countertop of the nurses' station and wondering if it was high enough to conceal a tiger.

* * *

"I put my shoes as far into the toilet as I could get 'em—"

"With what?" Schiff looked like kid doped up on sugar and dropped off by wearied parents at a story time. Beside him, Jonathan looked like a kid whose parents had told him they were divorcing on the same day he'd found out that he was allergic to chocolate. It was cute enough for the Joker to find it in his heart to forgive the Scarecrow for the pronunciation thing.

"With my hands, kiddo, don't interrupt."

Schiff wrinkled his nose but remained silent. Jonathan was regarding the nurses' station now, the irritation in his face draining to make room for anxiety. "Anyway, I shoved my shoes into it and started flushing."

"Wh—"

"Because I wanted to convert the room into a swimming pool. Shush."

"That wouldn't flood the entire ward." Jonathan looked surprised by his own words as he turned to face the Joker, mouthing them again under his breath.

"No, Scary, it would_n't_. But the flushing didn't do the job fast enough, so I kicked at the thing until it broke_._" He could just reach the blond hairs on the arm of the couch with his fingers, and he grabbed hold of them to give his hands something to do.

"But you didn't swim." Schiff leaned forward and tugged on his pant leg, soaked only half the way up.

"The door leaked."

And speaking of doors, the one to the rec room opened to accommodate another orderly and patient, this pair being Zsasz and Lotter. Zsasz looked indifferent to his surroundings or possibly oblivious, but Lotter looked far worse for wear than Joker had ever seen him in his visits to the cell at night. He was sweating and twitching, with his gaze going everywhere but where he was walking and his pace erratic. Maybe he'd missed a cigarette break, though if missing a break messed him up this badly, he really should consider the patch.

The Joker opened his mouth to say as much and stopped mid-vocalization as his eyes fell on Jonathan.

Crane wasn't just watching the orderly. He was scrutinizing, leaning forward with his arms propped up onto the back of the couch, and his fingers were clenched on the fabric, every muscle tensed. It was similar to how he'd looked when he tried analyzing the Joker in their conversations, but much more focused. Much more determined.

The Joker understood without asking that Jonathan was responsible for the orderly's current predicament. That answered the question of which orderly liked blue eyes. "What'dya do to him, Jonny?"

"He smokes."

That was all he needed for the puzzle pieces to fit together. Psychopharmacologist. Smoker. Schiff in the infirmary near the medications. The Joker would have been helpless to stop his giggles if he tried, which he did not. _Well played, Harpo. Well played. _"I'd shake your hand if I could move, Jonny."

Lotter managed to drag Zsasz to a chair, no small feat considering that it was all he could do to stay upright, and was in the act of binding him there when Jonathan stood and moved, so slowly the Joker thought the orderly would die of heart failure before the Scarecrow got there, until he'd halved the space between them.

Clicking the ankle cuffs into place, Lotter raised his head. He caught Jonathan's eye and tensed, quite an accomplishment for someone shaking more than a heroin addict in the throes of withdrawal.

"You've got a pretty mouth," Jonathan said, so softly the Joker could barely make out the words.

Lotter fled. He bolted up, skittered to regain his balance, and all but ran from the room without as much as a glance back over his shoulder.

"Is that what he said to you?" The Joker pulled the hairs onto his lap, rolling them between his fingers.

Jonathan shook his head. There was no happiness on his face, or relief. Just cool calculation and resolve. The Joker hadn't known the man was capable of that much. But hate, of course, was a powerful motivator. "_Deliverance. _I assumed that he'd seen it."

"You assumed right."

Jonathan didn't answer. With the same cold determination, he scanned the room. The nurses were ushering the ordinary patients away from the high securities, and the orderlies had either left to retrieve more inmates or were guarding the ones already in the room. No one was watching the door, and apparently, no one had seen Lotter run for it. The corners of Jonathan's mouth twitched upwards, and he started for the door.

The Joker tried to tug his hands free, succeeding only in chafing his wrists. "Thomas. Can you pick locks?"

Schiff gave the question far more reflection than it deserved and ultimately shook his head. "Sorry, Joker."

_Damn it. _He wasn't sure what the Scarecrow had in store, but whatever it was, he'd pay to see it.

* * *

AN: "Where Your Eyes Don't Go:" www. youtube .com/ watch?v=hqY3kASMFW8 Yes, I know I've used two TMBG songs in a row now, but both just seemed so fitting.

The bit about not being fit to lick the dirt from the Joker's spats comes from _Batman: The Animated Series_, in which the Joker gives a eulogy when he believes Batman is dead: http:/ www. youtube. com/ watch?v=Ld0uIhst3TA Apparently, this scene was done in one take because everyone recording the voices was laughing too hard afterward to do it again.

There'll be more in the next chapter about exactly what Jonathan did to the cigarettes.

_Deliverance _is a movie famous for two things, the "dueling banjoes" scene (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=1tqxzWdKKu8) and the rape scene, in which the line "You've got a pretty mouth" is spoken.


	29. You're Gonna Die

AN: As those of you who've read _Shadow Selves _have probably guessed, I love James Joyce. The man is a genius. I don't, however, enjoy analyzing him. And I especially don't enjoy analyzing him when that fire alarm from the other night has given me something that's either a cold or an ear infection and either way feels like someone's rammed an ice pick into my throat. Hence why I'm writing another chapter tonight instead of writing an essay.

**Note: **This chapter deals with rape rather a lot, so be warned.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"It's a brand new day and the sun is high.

All the birds are singing that you're gonna die."

—"Brand New Day," _Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog_

Lotter had gone to the broom closet.

He was out of sight by the time Jonathan stepped into the hallway. It couldn't be avoided. There was an art in moving to avoid detection; the eye perceived objects in motions more readily than objects at rest. Beyond the speed, there was an art to the movement. It had to look purposeful—the orderlies and the nurses were trained to deal with the disoriented and would gravitate toward anyone wandering aimlessly, consciously or not—but not too driven. Storming around or running from the room would also draw unwanted attention. Jonathan wasn't sure how Lotter had escaped that. The orderly's uniform, perhaps, or the chaos the Joker had caused from flooding his ward.

A rush of thoughts flooded Jonathan's mind as he moved; his steps quickening now that he was out of sight from the rec room. Where was the Joker going to sleep while they were repairing the water damage? Where would any of the high security patients go? Some of them had been his test subjects, some of them would remember what the sessions had been like. He didn't relish the prospect of sharing his ward with any of them. What would the flooding do to an asylum already damaged by water, or rather, steam from the night the Ra's Al Ghul had activated his toxin? Did tigers only attack when their prey wasn't facing them, or did that depend on how hungry they were?

For once he was able to block the worries without the aid of hypnosis. It was little more than white noise in the background now, and irrelevant to the task at hand. When the Batman had poisoned him, the damage to his sanity had been akin to cracking a mirror. The pieces were all there, but the connections between them were jagged and gapped. Then he'd been brought back to Arkham, and the sufferings here had been like shaking the mirror. The pieces began to slide.

But just now, seeing Lotter, seeing the _fear _he had caused with only an assortment of chemicals and a few whispered words; _that _had pushed all the glass out of the frame. But the backing remained behind the shards, and the backing wasn't afraid of birds or the smell of nicotine or orderlies that got off on torturing the inmates. It was a part of him that he hadn't seen since the Bat had swooped down into his operation and ruined everything, a part of him that he hadn't realized he'd missed so much until it was back, and burning with the desire for revenge.

Lotter was in the broom closet, and he knew it even without seeing what hall the man had staggered down. It was basic psychology; common sense, really. People clung to the familiar when they terrified. It was why battered women clung to abusive partners, or why alcoholics clung to the bottle even when they realized the damage they were doing to themselves and those around them. Part of it was a dependency, either physical or emotional, and part of it was a lack of self-worth, but it was also the fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and the fears paralyzed them, leaving them broken and clinging to the only things they knew. So Lotter would be in the broom closet.

Besides, he should still be latching to the cigarettes like an infant to its mother's milk, so if Lotter had retained any self-awareness or control, he'd either be in the broom closet or as close as he got to it before he collapsed.

It had been so easy.

Jonathan hadn't even had a plan the first time he'd stolen the cigarettes.

Lotter was forgetful, and that was what had allowed things to work. Jonathan had found the cigarettes before the meds he was on now had taken effect, and just _what _he'd been thinking, he wasn't sure. His memories of that time were, again, like a mirror, fogged up and murky, and Jonathan had the feeling that that was for the best, because what he could remember of the time wasn't at all pleasant. But he did know that the orderlies had been making their visits in that time, so maybe the theft had been out of spite. It wasn't until later, after _that_, that Jonathan had rediscovered the cigarettes, hidden between his books and the wall, that he'd come up with the plan.

His stay in the infirmary had sparked the idea. Between the drugs and the hallucinations, his memories of the time were little more than vignettes, split-seconds of interaction that he could remember—a nurse standing over him with a needle, someone with greenish-blond hair who had seemed familiar, Joan's visits—but he remembered the morphine and the antibiotics, and he remembered thinking of Arkham's pharmacy and all the drugs it contained. It would be crude compared to his usual methods, like attempting to recreate the Sistine Chapel with finger paints, but he'd wondered if it could be done whenever he could focus well enough to think about it. The right drugs could cause hallucinations, or produce them as side effects.

Jonathan had never focused on the side effects of his compound before incarceration, but a week of vomiting up everything he even thought about eating when they'd started the medications had taught him to examine all aspects of a drug.

Thomas Schiff had been the obvious choice to transfer the drugs. The nurses viewed him as harmless, he already had a tendency to wander away from escorts, anything he said was dismissed as a product of his schizophrenia, he considered himself Jonathan's friend, for some inexplicable reason, and, most importantly, unlike Lucy or Joan, he had no issue with breaking the law or torturing the deserving. Jonathan had been concerned with whether or not he'd receive the drugs he'd asked for, but save for a few slips at the start of the process, Thomas had done exactly as instructed, whenever he managed to escape supervision long enough.

Jonathan had first tested to see which drug would give Lotter a reaction. The process was simple: crush the pills and mix with water, introduce to the cigarettes. Let dry overnight. Thomas steals a pack in the morning, which is written off as Lotter's usual forgetfulness. Take drugged pack to rec room, where Lotter will discover and smoke it. Take other pack to room. Repeat process. A different drug each day, in the largest quantity he could manage, to test the reactions. On the third day, he'd struck gold. Shaking, wide eyes, irritability. Nothing major—after all, it hadn't had the time to amass in Lotter's system—but enough for him to confirm what drug would work.

And enough observation to know that Lotter became violent when frightened.

Some people screamed when terrified. Others giggled. Some were silent, some were uncharacteristically talkative. There were people who cried and people who became stoic, people who became withdrawn, and people who became violent. Those were the most dangerous. Jonathan had earned more than his fair share of bruises by underestimating the lengths his patients could go to when suffering from his toxin. Had the body armor not restricted his movements, the Batman would have done everything in his power to overpower his tormenter—in this case, Jonathan—and if he were to use the drug alone on Lotter, he'd be even more damaged than he was after his last encounter with the monster. Even under a mild influence, Lotter had struck an incompliant patient in the middle of the rec room. Jonathan had experienced sheer terror in that moment, fearing that the orderly would be fired before he could make him suffer.

But, this being Arkham, Lotter was only reprimanded, and Jonathan was able to proceed.

He'd requested other drugs from Thomas, and continued. He could have built up the dose and simply introduced a sedative with it, but that would ruin it. Sedatives would disorient Lotter, remove him from the experience. Jonathan wanted him aware, wanted him to suffer every last horrible minute and _know _that he was suffering. So he'd built up the drug that would provide the fear in miniscule doses over weeks, all the while adding other drugs in increasing increments, to make the orderly addicted. It had taken weeks, but when things got to the point where Lotter was coming in showing signs of withdrawal, having finished the pack at home and gone through the night without the drugs, Jonathan had cut out the addictive chemicals and upped the fear. That had been yesterday.

Now Lotter was in withdrawal—weakened, shaking, sickly—and terrified. And Scarecrow couldn't be happier.

Strange, given how jumbled the rest of the world was after the toxin, that he'd never struggled to remember what he was doing when he drugged the cigarettes. It gave him badly needed focus, and though it didn't ground his mind entirely, it gave him something of an anchoring point. He would miss it, if revenge didn't already taste so sweet.

Lotter hadn't even managed to close the door completely. _Never did take pride in his job._ Scarecrow felt a smirk growing across his face, such a wide smile that it would have been more befitting the Clown Prince of Crime or the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. He wrapped his fingers around the door's handle, tried to think of the perfect thing to say upon stepping inside, then decided he didn't have the patience for it and threw the door open with such force that it slammed against the wall.

Lotter's cigarette slipped from his fingers and fell to the tile between his legs. His mouth moved, but without sound, save for the air he was gasping in and out like a fish pulled from water.

"What big eyes you have." All right, so that was as bad of a line as "You need to lighten up" but, as he'd been then, Scarecrow was too elated to care. He was shaking as badly as Lotter, from adrenaline and joy and _fear_, but the fear one had before skydiving or bungee-jumping or another high risk activity, the rush of doing something both terrifying and wonderful and loving every second.

Scarecrow was going to love this. Hell, he loved it already.

"Y—you—"

He leaned in the doorway casually, almost seductively, regarding the orderly with half-lidded eyes as he reached one arm back to the door handle. "You don't look happy to see me."

Lotter kicked, but his condition gave him all the subtlety of a meteorite and all the speed of a tortoise, and Scarecrow barely had to step back to avoid the blow.

"Well, that wasn't nice."

"You..." The lighter had fallen from his other hand. It made the hairs on the back of Scarecrow's neck rise to see it. An innocuous enough item at first glance, little more than a small piece of red plastic, but when it had been held up to his skin and flickered on and off, held near his eye as a threat, it had an entirely different connotation. He wanted to shove it in Lotter's eyes, or down his throat. "Y-you s-shouldn't be—"

"Here?" He couldn't seem to stop grinning; almost felt compelled to reach up and make sure he wasn't sporting his own Glasgow smile. "But everybody else goes where they shouldn't be." He stepped into the room, slowly pulling the door shut behind him. Scarecrow wanted to slam it, wanted to make the man jump, but he'd banged it open and to do so again would be begging for unwanted company. "Say, to wards that aren't a part of their shift detail, or patients' cells, or even _inside _of the—"

Pain exploded in his shin and radiated through his leg. Lotter had kicked again, and he hadn't seen it coming. There wasn't a great deal of force behind it, but it was right on the bone, and he hadn't been prepared. Scarecrow heard the door click behind him as he stumbled, let himself fall forward as an idea occurred to him. He managed to angle himself before lost balance completely, and collapsed right on top of Lotter, legs going to either side of the man's torso as his hands hit the orderly's shoulders, forcing him back down against the wall.

His knees hit against the tiled floor with an audible crack, but he couldn't bring himself to care about the reverberations it sent through the lower half of his body. This couldn't have worked better if Scarecrow had planned it in advance, and now that he'd fallen, he could have smacked himself for not coming up with it on his own.

After all, it was obvious what Lotter was afraid of.

There were certain people that Jonathan had never bothered to test his compound on, simply because it was obvious what their fears were. That wasn't to say that what a person experienced was the only factor in his research—there was also the duration, the effectiveness, the physical and emotional reactions, and so on—but finding out what frightened people and why played a large part in his understanding of fear itself. Thus it would make no sense to test the compound on someone with an obvious fear, such as Lucy. It would be a waste of several very expensive, very rare chemicals, and it wasn't worth it when he could deduce it after a moment's glance.

As Scarecrow could do with Lotter.

Clearly, he'd gone into his position at Arkham for the same reason serial killers wanted jobs that put them in a position of authority. Control. Power. Lording over the weaker person. Jonathan had encountered that type throughout his life, only in school they had been pushing him down on the playground and pissing on his clothes while he was showering in gym instead of raping him in his cell. Lotter was an overgrown schoolyard bully, and they didn't like it when someone made _them _eat dirt for a change. He feared the loss of power, the removal of control. Just like what Lotter had done to Jonathan. It was only fair to return the favor.

And even if rape wasn't the loss of power he feared, terror made one more suggestible. Jonathan had been able to manipulate the vague fear of harm into specifics such as blood, rabbits, and guns just by introducing an object or an idea, and Scarecrow fully intended to do the latter now.

He met the orderly's eyes, shifting his legs so that he was practically straddling the bastard. Would have been, if Lotter hadn't pushed himself straight up against the wall. "This," Scarecrow said, positively giddy and only half-succeeding in suppressing his giggles, "would be over faster if you'd just shut your fucking mouth and take it. Isn't that what you told me?"

"L-let _go._" Lotter was begging. _Begging. _His hands clawed at Scarecrow's arms and back, too weak to do anything more than slap weakly, and the scratches were little more than amusing. Scarecrow found himself _enjoying _the pain, faint stings that only served to remind him who had the upper hand, and who could inflict the real harm. "Get _off._"

Scarecrow blinked rapidly and deliberately, in a way that could be viewed as either bewildered or coy. He wasn't sure if Lotter was grounded enough to even notice his expression, but it was the little details that made the final picture so remarkable. "But that's what I'm _trying _to do." He wound a hand through what little hair the man had and tugged hard, jerking Lotter's head to the side as he pressed against the man with his hips.

Lotter had done the same to him, only his head had been pulled straight back, and he'd been pushed against from the back. Scarecrow might be able to flip him and recreate it, but he wanted to watch the bastard's face as he fell apart. "_Scream. _Scream all you want. Nobody's going to hear it."

But Lotter didn't scream. Maybe it was the withdrawal, or paralysis by fear. Maybe it was the result on all the smoking of his lungs. Whatever it was, Scarecrow wasn't amused. He wanted Lotter to suffer. To feel every bit of terror he'd inflicted, and then some. Cry until he was out of tears and scream until he was out of voice, and then keep going. Scarecrow slapped him across the face, hard.

A yelp. It was a start. "Don't." He was twisting under Scarecrow, still trying to get away, but pulling his legs up, trying to draw in on himself. All it did was bring Scarecrow closer. It was disgusting. "Don't—stop—"

He was _begging. _Scarecrow's stomach twisted and he ground against Lotter again, watched the sheer panic flash across his features, but it didn't relieve the nausea. "What's the matter? I thought you felt the same. Don't yo_u like _me? Didn't you say you liked my eyes?"

Lotter didn't answer, writhing and kicking at whatever was in reach. His fists came down hard on Scarecrow's back, and the pain brought him back to the moment, almost quelled his disgust. "_Don't_—"

Scarecrow, still holding the man's head to one side by the hair, knelt down and licked from Lotter's cheek to his collarbone, as he let the other hand walk its way up the orderly's chest from under his shirt. His heart was beating fast. Far too fast. _Good. _He let his lips linger against the man's skin before biting down as hard as he could.

Retribution. He still had bite scars on his own body.

And finally, Lotter screamed.

_You deserve worse. _Another slap. If not for his awkward position, he'd be punching.

Lotter had punched. Lotter had thrown him against walls, dragged him across the floor by the hair. He'd been kicked in the stomach so that he couldn't stand, straddled against the floor with his arms twisted behind his back. He'd felt Lotter's teeth on his skin, his _tongue_, his filthy, horrible hands roaming over Jonathan's body, scratching and restraining, and not even having the decency to cover his mouth, so he had to shame himself, screaming and screaming until he was hoarse for help that never arrived. He'd heard himself tear, felt his entire body burn and didn't even have the luck to black out until it was over, held down in agony and remaining tortured and bleeding until morning when they'd found him on the floor, bruised and broken. Violated.

Lotter deserved it and worse.

He bit again, this time on the throat, and yanked his head back as he did. Flesh came away, clenched between his teeth. Not a great deal, nothing life threatening, but warm blood dripped down his chin and he'd heard the skin tear and Scarecrow was unable to keep from shrieking himself, in some sort of demented, unplanned mirth, and Lotter screamed and struggled, fists flailing and hitting, but he couldn't even _feel _it with this sudden endorphin rush.

"STOP IT!"

"_You didn't stop_!" Lotter tried to pull away, hands clutched over his chest, but Scarecrow slapped him again, hard enough for the impact to travel through his hand and up past the shoulder, hard enough for blood to trickle from the ear on that side of Lotter's head. "You didn't stop! Why should I?"

"P-please." Lotter's face was turning a pallid, ghastly white, clutching at his chest as he struggled weakly. "C-Crane. I—please—I'm s—"

_Please. _Jonathan had _never _said please, never _begged _for mercy. His stomach was churning now, and he couldn't bring himself to wipe the blood from his lips in the hopes or alleviating the nausea, couldn't do anything but stare at Lotter, disgusted. Sickened. "You—you're pathetic."

Lotter didn't answer. His breaths were coming in weak and shallow, face chalky.

One of Scarecrow's hands fell to the floor, nerveless, and hit against something other than tile. The lighter. He turned his hand, grasped it. Brought it up and the flame flickered into life. "You're _pathetic_!" Scarecrow held the fire against Lotter's skin, and the subsequent scream and sizzle did nothing to alleviate his anger, not even the second time he did it, or the third, or the fifth, or the seventeenth.

He abandoned the lighter then, screaming and hitting and making the blood pour from Lotter's nose and mouth and anywhere else he could break the skin, screaming, sometimes at Lotter for being spineless, and sometimes wordless, animalistic wails, until Lotter's hands fell away from his chest and he lay back on the floor, still and silent, even when Scarecrow shook him.

"GET UP!" Scarecrow had to keep shaking, punching, breaking, had to keep going because that _couldn't _be it. Lotter couldn't lie there and take it. It was obscene. Disgusting. Pathetic. He should have fought back. _He should have fought back. _And he hadn't, and he was lying there broken, like a human being instead of a monster or a demon or anything else that made the thought of him more manageable, and he was ruined and humiliated and frightened and gone forever, and it didn't do the least to improve Jonathan's mood, so it couldn't be over, _couldn't_ be, because this was supposed to fix everything and it hadn't at _all._

Jonathan had been standing one minute, and kicking. In the next, he was on the floor of the closet, vomiting up what little he'd eaten onto the tiles, onto the pants of Lotter's uniform. The laundry attendants would have to bleach it. Standard for bodily fluids, and besides the vomit, there was Lotter's blood. He couldn't remember when he'd ended up on the floor.

Jonathan was starting to worry that he was losing his mind.

The door behind him opened at some point. He couldn't say how much later it had been. Jonathan couldn't bring himself to turn, or even sit up probably. His lungs didn't seem to be taking in air properly and he couldn't stop gasping. There was a gasp from behind him; a woman, judging from the pitch.

A moment of silence. Then, so lightly he had to look to confirm it, a hand on his shoulder.

"Jonathan, let's go to the infirmary."

And for reasons Jonathan wouldn't be able to explain even to himself, if he had the insight at the present to analyze his decisions, he took Joan's hand and allowed himself to be led away from the broom closet, though the blood and the singe marks still remained on his own uniform.

* * *

AN: This is "Brand New Day" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=ILObfEzX92k&feature=related) and if you haven't seen _Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog _in its entirety (which is only about forty-five minutes), I highly recommend it. For Americans, it's all on Hulu, and for others, it's on DVD (complete with two commentaries, one of them being Commentary The Musical) and probably on Youtube. I think Dr. Horrible and Dr. Crane would get along if they ever met.

Disclaimer: I know little about chemistry and even less about pharmacology, so I've probably described something scientifically impossible in the part of the chapter about the pills. If I have, just keep in mind that in the Bat-universe, it's possible to take a fingerprint from a shattered bullet (which is entirely impossible in real life) and that Harvey can run around that badly burned and still think coherently (incidentally, his burns were supposedly more realistic at one point, but it made test audiences sick, so they had to go more over the top; I'd love to see what he would have looked like originally).

Anyway, the fear toxin cigarettes were inspired by the Batman comic _Dark Victory_, in which Scarecrow does something similar with Alberto Falcone's cigarettes, although those take effect immediately and don't induce all out panic, just unease.

I mentioned at the beginning of this fic that it would deal with sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, which it has throughout, but I think each will have its own chapter that heavily deals with that abuse. Obviously, this was the sexual one, and the emotional and physical train wrecks are yet to come.

And in case you were wondering, no, Jonathan wasn't planning to seriously rape the man. He just wanted to suggest it to make Lotter panic.


	30. He Had It Coming

AN: And my laptop charger that I just started using in September has already begun that "plugged in, not charging" nonsense. I don't know what I've done to make technology hate me, but someone please tell me so I can antone.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"He had it coming, he had it coming, he only had himself to blame,

If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it, I betcha you would have done the same."

—"Cell Block Tango," _Chicago_

Jonathan was covered in blood.

No, not covered. Joan closed her eyes, forced a steady breath into her body. She was letting her emotions overrun the situation—though _Christ_, how could she _not_?—and make it all the more terrible. It was horrible enough without imagining her friend covered in blood. It only went from his lips to the bottom of his shirt in a long, thin stain. Joan had seen the wound on Lotter's throat; her legs trembled beneath her even more as she recalled it, threatening to give out completely. She could guess where the blood there had come from. But it was on his arms, too, his neck, his pant legs. Joan couldn't discern if they'd come from a struggle with Lotter or if they were self-inflicted. She couldn't bring herself to examine his scratches or the burn marks on his clothing in closer detail, not now.

Her free hand went to the radio in her pocket. Her fingers were numb as she pulled it out and struggled to operate it one-handed. She wasn't about to let go of Jonathan; she still wasn't sure why he'd allowed her to guide him in the first place. God, she wouldn't even be using the radio if procedure hadn't been drilled into her head. Jonathan had either killed a man or somehow exacerbated the circumstances that led to his death. Joan didn't want to think of what the repercussion for this would be and she didn't want to remind him of the inevitable fallout approaching by reporting Lotter's death over the radio.

Maybe he wouldn't hear it. Wishful thinking, but Jonathan hadn't looked at her or spoken or in any way acknowledged her presence since he took her hand. Maybe it wasn't an act; maybe he really had blocked out the world around him. That should have worried her. And some part of her was worried, terrified, but more than anything, she found herself wishing that just this once he had no idea what was going on around him.

She'd stalled long enough. Joan dialed down the volume on the radio, braced herself, and pushed "talk," a burst of static breaking the silence. "Bolton."

A pause before the chief of security responded, obviously overworked, his voice fast and short. Joan didn't want to imagine how it would sound by the time she was through explaining. "No sign of Crane yet, Doctor. We're—"

"I found him." It seemed eons ago, though it could only have been half an hour, forty-five minutes tops, before she'd heard about the flooding. About the patients from the high security ward being relocated to the rec room until they decided what to do with them. Including the Joker, who'd reminded Jonathan of the rape the last time they'd spoken.

The rape. Bolton was still speaking through the radio, but her mind had stopped translating the sounds into words. She knew who'd done it now. Now that there was nothing she could do to punish the man, to remove him from Jonathan's life in a way that wouldn't have traumatized him. Now that she couldn't make him face justice. "I found him."

"What?"

"I found him." Joan realized she'd tightened her grip on Jonathan's hand unconsciously, and willed herself not to squeeze any harder. What if the orderlies decided to band together and punish him for taking one of their own? She couldn't protect him every hour of every day. _I couldn't protect him at all._ This had proven it. "He was in the janitor's closet in Ward B."

The orderlies that weren't busy escorting high security patients had started the search for Jonathan immediately after Joan had dialed security upon arriving in the rec room to check on her patient and finding him missing. They'd started with the most dangerous locations; the ones closest to the exits, the medications, surgical tools, and the flooded high security ward. Joan had started back toward her office, with the vain and futile hope that he might have wanted to talk. On the way, she'd cut through Ward B, the wing that housed the low security female patients and was closest to the offices, and that was when she'd heard the screaming.

Joanthan's screaming. She recognized it from when he'd first been brought back and lacked the control the medication gave him.

"Oh." He didn't try to mask his irritation. "Well, if you don't need—"

"He was with Lotter."

Jonathan's hand went tense in hers; the blood under his nails a sharp contrast to how pale his skin had become. He still wouldn't look at her.

"What?"

"He was with Lotter. Lotter's—he's dead, Bolton. Lotter's dead."

Dead. Possibly murdered. Either way, she saw his corpse, bloodied and wide-eyed, lying in a puddle of vomit beside Jonathan every time she closed her eyes and it wasn't a visual that was going to leave her, not for God knows how long. Maybe years. The sight would have been bad enough if she didn't know the buildup. Lotter had raped him. He _must _have. For everything wrong with her friend, Jonathan wasn't violent without provocation. Cold, yes, willing to poison someone without remorse to further his research, but not violent. Even when he'd been brought in, he had only lashed out to defend himself against the staff and his imagined tormentors. No, Lotter must have raped him, and Jonathan had tortured him, _killed _him in response.

Bolton was speaking again. No, shouting. Joan shut the radio off and slipped it back into her pocket. Let Dr. Arkham tear into her for breaking protocol. There would be much worse to deal with, and soon.

"I'm sorry, Jonathan."

She hadn't intended to speak. She didn't even know what she was apologizing for. Remaining oblivious while the situation escalated this far out of hand? Failing to protect him from abuse in the first place? Finding a combination of medications that had stabilized him but not fully removed his symptoms? The fact that he'd been poisoned, lost his position, and escaped from the hospital that might have been able to help him earlier on all in one night? The words encompassed everything and still fell flat.

Jonathan was expressionless; his gaze locked on the floor as he walked. Joan knew that she ought to be frightened. Lotter was dead. She didn't know the cause—she'd wanted to run screaming from the corpse and it was only Jonathan's presence that had prevented her—but unless he'd just happened to have a heart attack or stroke and her patient had come across him in the throes of death, Jonathan had had a hand in Lotter's demise. And part of her, a large part, was terrified, but for Jonathan's safety, and with worry of what would be done to him in punishment, or if she'd be allowed to stay on as his doctor.

No, she wasn't frightened of Jonathan. She was frightened _for _him, and saddened. And furious.

Why couldn't he have _spoken _to her? A name. A _name_, two syllables, now that she knew who it was. It was all she would have needed. Arkham Asylum couldn't overlook Jonathan's assault as it did other abuse. He hadn't been able to walk; he'd required rectal stitches and antibiotics to prevent infection. They'd been forced to report it, and unless they wanted a reputation of unpunished abuse among their investors, they had to punish anyone they found to be involved. If he'd just _told _her, if he'd trusted her instead of taking matters into his own hands, they wouldn't be fucked over as they were now. If he'd spoken at _all, _they might have made progress, she might have prevented things from going this far. If he'd just _spoken_, if he hadn't run away from the asylum when that terrorist group released his poison, if he hadn't lied and tortured his patients and ruined—

If he hadn't been _sick._ But he was, and it did no good to hold him to standards as if he wasn't. It provided no catharsis or solutions, only made her blood pressure worse.

"I—" The words caught in her throat as her scream had when she'd noticed Jonathan on his hands and knees beside Lotter's body. What was she supposed to say; "I'm sorry I didn't help you"? There weren't words for this. "I—I won't let the orderlies hurt you again. I promise." And she was going to find a way to keep that promise, even if it meant sacrificing her sleep night after night to guard his cell. _I owe him that much, after everything else he's gone through._ If this asylum—if_ she_ had actually done her damn job properly and taken care of him, she wouldn't be escorting him to the infirmary now, covered another man's blood, with scrapes and burns that could well be self-inflicted.

She silenced Teresa with a look as they stepped in, before the nurse could gasp or start in with questions that were better left for after Jonathan was taken care of. "He needs disinfectants and bandages," she instructed, coaxing him to lie on the nearest cot. "And a sedative. I'll give it to him."

A death on the premises meant that the police would be arriving shortly, along with the EMTs to transport the body. The GPD would have to question Jonathan, though he was obviously in no state to answer. It was police procedure, and unavoidable.

But Joan wasn't going to make him suffer through it now, not if she could put it off by putting him into a drugged sleep. Dr. Arkham would be furious. She couldn't bring himself to care.

She moved herself into his line of sight. His pupils adjusted to the change of view, though the rest of him remained impassive. "Jonathan? Is it all right if I give you something to help you sleep?"

To her shock, he nodded.

"All right." Teresa gave her the syringe and she slipped her hand out of his to push the air from the plunger. "Teresa's going to get you cleaned up and we'll talk when you're awake, all right?"

No response this time. She'd been foolish to hope for one. He didn't want to talk, not to her, not to the police, not to anybody. Gently, she held out his arm and injected the lorazepam, sticking him with the needle in the least bruised and scraped area of skin that she could find on his inner elbow. Joan lowered his arm down to the sheet after the fact; started to rise so that she could meet the administrator at the door if Arkham tracked her down before the sedative took full effect.

"Don't."

Jonathan's hand closed around her wrist. His grip was weak though the drugs couldn't be taking effect that quickly, and Joan knew she could break it if she chose just by standing up the rest of the way. But she didn't, and moved his wrist to take his hand as she sat back down on the cot. "Yes, Jonathan?"

"Stay."

Joan didn't say anything. Ten minutes later, when he'd drifted off, Teresa had begun to clean him off, and Jeremiah Arkham ran in, red-faced and shouting that the GPD would be here in the next five minutes and she had better have a good explanation for not contacting him, she still didn't let go.

* * *

The hospital had kept it a secret until visiting hours were over.

Lucy had to give them credit for that. A death—a _murder_, according to the rumors—wasn't something easy to hide, especially when the police and the paramedics arrived in the middle of the day. But if Arkham couldn't hide all the things that went on behind closed doors, they'd have shut down years ago. Karen and Victoria had been in the visitor's room at the time, and said the explanation given to the families had been that a staff member had suffered a heart attack, and was being escorted to the hospital. They'd believed it, until they'd arrived in the rec room and heard what Lucy had witnessed.

Her eyes had been on the Joker.

It pained her to admit it now; even to herself. Dr. Crane had been _right there_, and so had Lotter, right in front of her, but she'd missed it. She should have protected the man who'd helped her so much, as she'd tried—and failed—to do on the couch. Not that pinning him by the arms had been the best way to protect him against the madman that he'd stopped talking to—Lucy wasn't sure why they'd stopped talking, but it was the _Joker_, and whatever it was, it couldn't be good—but her mind had been full of all the terrible news stories about the clown and her heart pounding and her schedule thrown off balance, and holding onto him for dear life was the best she could come up with at the moment. She shouldn't have left when Dr. Crane asked her to. She shouldn't have left him alone with _that._

But she had, and according to Karen, the latest rumor was that Dr. Crane had played a part in Lotter's death.

Watching the Joker was like watching a burning building. Horrible and frightening, but impossible to look away from. He'd just sat there, talking to Thomas Schiff, and toying with the strands of hair he'd been able to pull from the arm of the couch. Karen's hair. Lucy hadn't told that part to Karen when she recounted the story, as she hadn't mentioned that the Joker was blond as well. She didn't want to think of him in terms of blond or brunet, or Caucasian, or anything else that made him sound human and ordinary, because he wasn't.

He'd talked for what seemed like hours and Lucy was unable to pry her eyes from his scars; the way they moved ever so slightly as he spoke. It was disgusting, and horrific, but almost hypnotic. She didn't explain that either. Karen and Victoria wouldn't understand, and anyway, it was irrelevant. One minute, the Joker had been talking, and the next, Lyle Bolton had gotten a message over the radio and sent every orderly who wasn't restraining a patient to a chair to find Dr. Crane. It was then that she realized he'd disappeared, and become so sick with worry that she was in danger of throwing up.

She'd even tried to leave the room to follow him, but the few orderlies left inside had blocked off the door to keep another incident from following. So she'd been forced to sit, biting her nails to the quick and trying to keep the bile from rising in her throat, when Bolton's radio crackled to life again and he'd run from the room, shouting as he did.

Lotter was dead. She'd known it before Karen and Victoria, and that never happened.

Lotter was dead, and they said Dr. Crane was involved. She knew what the doctor had suffered, and it didn't take someone with his level of genius to put two and two together after the fact, and realize that it wasn't a stretch to paint an orderly who spent his time leering at the patients and making awful remarks as a rapist. Dr. Crane always had tensed up when Lotter was around. Again, she should have noticed, and again, she'd failed him.

But Dr. Crane…he wasn't a killer. Even when the truth had come out about his experiments, there'd never been mentions of death. He was portrayed as a monster, but there was more to him than that. He wasn't a bad person. And if he had killed Lotter, it wouldn't have been in cold blood, or torturous. The man had raped him. He'd taken everything Dr. Crane had in Arkham, the place that was meant to keep him safe. She'd never been brutalized, but even without knowing the pain firsthand, she couldn't imagine looking the doctor in the eye afterward and telling him that he'd been wrong.

But she couldn't imagine telling him it was right either.

Lucy shook her head, winding her ponytail around her hands tighter and tighter until there was nothing left to wrap, trying to make sense of this overload of information. She wasn't going to abandon Dr. Crane, whatever he'd done. He'd helped her from the edge before, and she had to be there for him.

* * *

"So, your friends, uh, not in the mood tonight?"

Hadley glared through the window, but he made no move to swipe his ID card in the door lock and gain access into the room. The orderly was a lot of things, including a complete idiot—he'd have to be, to provoke the Clown Prince of Crime—but in his own odd, abusive way, he was cunning, and he had the sense not to walk into a lion's cage without support. "Think you're funny?"

"Well, _yeah_, but wouldn't you say that's beside the point?" His grin stretched with his body and he spread out on the bed—he'd been temporarily relocated to a room with cinderblock walls and a cot—scratching absently at his stomach as he watched Hadley's face go tomato red. "I didn't play a part in this, ya know. It was all that little Scarecrow, and the fact that he did your friend in? That's downright _hilarious _right ther—"

"Go ahead and laugh while you still can, _freak_."

_How charmingly cliché. _"Don't mind if I do." Really, it _was _hysterical. Jonathan Crane had killed someone. Killed that annoying bastard who smoked too much and, next to Hadley, was the Joker's most frequent night time visitor. The Joker still needed to shake his hand for that. Free entertainment, removing a source of irritation—and secondhand smoke—and he'd taken out his rapist. Street justice at its finest. Batsy would be proud. Or not.

"Fine. Dig yourself deeper."

Hadley wasn't much fun when he wasn't kicking and punching and somehow believing that he had the upper hand. Standing behind the safety of a door, all full of anger over his fallen beating buddy and talking like a character in the world's most trite prison film, he was incredibly boring. "Either come in here and make me sorry or go find someone else to beat on. I'd try the cata_ton_ic ward, you probably won't need backup there. Not much."

Hadley slammed his hands against the door, which might have been intimidating if not for the part where it totally wasn't. "Keep pushing, clown. You'll regret it."

"I wait with bated breath."

The orderly gave one last glare before storming off, and the Joker contemplated breaking out to bring Jonny an ice cream cake for making today so much fun.

* * *

AN: "Cell Block Tango" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=GoCZEmfnE-M) is my favorite song in _Chicago_, partially because of the intensity, and partially because the dance is so fantastic. Its movies like these that make me wish I could dance. You think I'd know something about it after the YMCA's ballet classes and three years of show choir, but no.

I briefly mentioned the blood and singe marks on Jonathan in the last chapter, but I didn't explain them because it was in his viewpoint and he didn't notice. I think he went after himself while he was going at Lotter, and ended up taking some of his frustrations about his own inability to fight back out on himself.


	31. Forget Today's Pain

AN: I woke up this morning with absolutely no voice, and I mean none. When I attempted to talk, I was capable of guttural sounds not unlike Christian Bale's Batman voice, but not actual speech. Things got better as the day went, but I've still got a spectacular head cold, and as such, this chapter hasn't turned out as long as I intended. So think of it as a bridge to the next chapter, which will be more intense.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"Fly me high through the starry skies, maybe to an astral plane;

Cross the highways of fantasy, help me to forget today's pain."

—Gary Wright, "Dream Weaver"

"You should go home and get some rest."

Joan straightened up and tried to pretend that she hadn't been one blink away from drifting off. She'd moved from Jonathan's cot to a stiff-backed plastic chair, one Teresa had brought in to facilitate the police interviews in the afternoon. She'd switched her seat, let go of Jonathan's hands, and left the infirmary three times—once to retrieve his files, once for food and once for the restroom—but otherwise, she hadn't left the spot. "I appreciate your concern, Linda, but—"

"But you're about to collapse and procedure won't allow me to let you sleep on a cot." Linda's hands were on her hips, white canvas shoes planted solidly against the floor, though her expression was sympathetic. The part of Joan that remained conscious enough to analyze details decided that this was likely how she dealt with uncooperative patients, but she was too fatigued to decide if that was amusing or patronizing, or worth her concern at all. "Believe me, there'd be more doctors here than patients, if the board would clear it."

_And you'd be one of them._ She glanced at the lines under Linda's eyes that her foundation never entirely concealed. Though Joan's own eyes had to look much worse at this point. She needed to sleep. She _wanted _to sleep, to close her eyes and forget today had ever happened. But it wasn't that easy. "I'm fine. It's barely eight."

Barely eight, of course, was entirely relative. Under ordinary circumstances, she'd have been wide awake when it was barely eight, and at home. Finishing up dinner, maybe, if she'd procrastinated working out and gotten a late start on the evening. Or taking care of bills with the news on as background noise, or checking out a new movie, finishing up a book. Whatever she'd be up to, she'd have put her day at Arkham out of her mind by the time it was barely eight, and, under ordinary circumstances, barely eight was often a perfectly nice part of the evening.

But "ordinary circumstances" didn't mean absolute chaos, and people running around like chickens with the heads hacked off. Ordinary circumstances didn't involve drugging her patient to protect him from police interrogations until he was stable enough—stable was also entirely relative where Jonathan was concerned—to handle it. Ordinarily, EMTs wouldn't be removing a corpse from a broom closet; a corpse that her friend had brought about. And while Jeremiah Arkham could be found nearly every other day pacing nervously over some issue, Joan hadn't seen him this badly off since the mass patient escape on the night when Jonathan's toxin flooded the Narrows. Brooks had been on the receiving end of the worst of it, but Joan hadn't escaped entirely unscathed. She could only imagine how things would be when the autopsy reports came back and they found out exactly what had gone on in the broom closet.

Hell, she might be out of a job when that happened.

Linda shared her thoughts on the matter, apparently. "And on a day like this, you should be in bed by now." She sat on the cot beside Jonathan's, releasing what little sternness that had been in her expression. "Joan, really. You need to take care of yourself too."

Jonathan hadn't moved after being sedated, apart from how Teresa had moved him to apply antiseptics and bandages to the scrapes and burns. Neither she nor the physician had been able to determine if the wounds were self-inflicted, so he'd been placed on suicide watch as a precaution, and the orange jumpsuit had been replaced with a dark green safety smock. Green was said to be soothing, but Joan didn't find it comforting at all. It only highlighted how pale Jonathan was in contrast, as the bulky fabric drew attention to just how thin he'd become. "I told him I'd stay."

"He won't be alone."

He wouldn't. Not as long as he was in the infirmary. Joan tried not to accentuate the negative, but her mind was suddenly full of all the horrible things that could happen the moment he was back in his own cell, alone, and Lotter's buddies decided they wanted revenge. She couldn't protect him every hour of the day. For God's sake, it had been less than twelve hours and she was already falling apart at the seams. "Linda, I _need _to be there for him."

"And you honestly think I'll let every bastard with a grudge come crashing through the doors and do as he pleases?" There was a hard edge in Linda's voice now, and a flash in her narrowed eyes.

She was alienating the nurses, on top of everything else. Wonderful. "No. Of course not. That's—I didn't—"

"I know, Joan." The fire had gone out of Linda's face, leaving her wearied; the bleached hair that had seemed so tamed a moment ago was frazzled and escaping from its bun. "Believe me, I don't like this any more than you do. But punishing yourself for it won't do Jonathan any good."

Joan closed Jonathan's file. The pages made a sound like dead leaves when they scraped against the manila folder. Her knees popped as she stood and her purse slid from her shoulder immediately after she pulled it up. She did need sleep, for all the good it would do. If it could erase today, that would be something. "Good night, Linda."

"Good luck."

* * *

Jonathan dreamed of bats.

One bat in particular, actually. A Batman, to be specific.

He never dreamed while sedated. The antipsychotics were a different story, one full of vomit and tears and fever dreams, and one that he never wanted to hear again, even if it was abridged and acted out by sock puppets in a foreign language. That might be enough to reduce the nightmarish qualities to something manageable—and even then, Jonathan had his doubts—but the more he considered such a reenactment, the less likely it seemed to happen and the more he remembered it—even if it was happening to a cotton-wool blend of a garment, and not himself—the more his stomach turned, so he put it out of his head. The antipsychotics had caused horrible nightmares for the first two weeks, nightmares that he'd woken from gasping and clutching at his chest, or clawing at his own skin as if the bad dreams flowed through his veins and he could open his flesh to let them spill out, sheets soaked through with sweat and body shaking.

The sedatives, however, made everything dark and quiet and uneventful. They dulled his mind—removed all that made him brilliant, _important_, made it nearly impossible to think or even care about his own wellbeing—but they took away the dreams, so he couldn't hate them completely.

But when he opened his eyes, the Batman was in the room, so he had to be dreaming.

His mind didn't register the Bat as soon as his eyes opened, or immediately thereafter, or even, if his sense of time could be trusted—and considering how his perception of everything _else _was as of late, that wasn't a gamble he felt safe taking—a few minutes later. Rather, his first thought was how difficult it was to keep his eyes open, which opened up to an entirely new line of questions, none of which he had an answer for. Was he sick? Especially exhausted? Kidnapped by the human traffickers and en route to Malaysia to be sold to a brothel? In Strange's office and so deep into a trance that he'd forgotten coming in and lying down in the first place?

His glasses were off, wherever he was, unless the last guess had been the correct one and he was so deeply asleep that he'd lost all sensations of the frames against his nose and face. Jonathan turned his head to glance down at what he was lying on, and the world went spinning.

Sick or drugged, and either way, the vertigo had removed his ability to tell up from down, let alone sit up and speculate on whether this place looked more like a hypnotherapist's office, or a crate on a boat bound for Asia. His eyes adjusted enough to tell light from dark, but the contrast only made the spinning more apparent, and sickening, and the shadows were spinning around the lighter areas like laundry in the wash or mice fleeing from a sudden light or bats swarming over—

There was a sudden pressure against his wrist and he was anchored once again.

His wrist lifted, and through his struggles to catch his breath and his racing thoughts—racing here meaning "the pace of a particularly motivated sloth"—Jonathan recognized that he hadn't moved of his own accord, which meant that either he was possessed or that something had hold of him. He risked moving his eyes, and this time, the world stayed still as his eyes traveled up his arm to whatever was manipulating him like a marionette. Or a sock puppet. Jonathan was suddenly aware of a pressure over his body, and the feel of a blanket over his legs and other arm. It didn't provide much in the way of warmth. Maybe he was in advanced hypothermia and this was all a dying hallucination.

Jonathan wished he had a pair of socks.

There was a hand holding his wrist, cold and covered in something other than skin. Something black. It seemed familiar, and something in him stirred deep inside, like a kick to the stomach from the inside out, but whatever it was had been buried beneath a fog, and Jonathan couldn't focus on it any more than he could bring his eyes to move any further. He blinked once. Twice. Another, and they stayed closed until he felt a strange pressure lower down on his arm. Jonathan turned his head with his eyes closed, and when the world didn't start spinning, he opened them.

Another hand, again in black, below the hand on his wrist. The fingers were touching his arm, but he couldn't feel it as well as he should. Paralysis, or possibly—bandages. The hands lowered his arm, and he caught a flash of white even paler than his skin. Why were there bandages? Jonathan braced his hands against the bed and tried to sit—he needed to examine his wounds and his surroundings and retrieve his glasses and find out who was touching him and get a pair of socks, hopefully ones that matched this time—but instead of moving upward or spinning, he felt as if he was falling over, backwards and headfirst and he tried to reach out to steady himself, or cry out from shock, but his voice and his limbs weren't responding and his eyes were closing again and—

The hands were on his shoulders now, and the mattress was against his back. There was a figure standing before him—funny, he didn't remember opening his eyes—and although it was dark, almost unmistakable from the background, Jonathan could make out the figure's shape.

Said shape had long pointed ears.

It had eyes as well, which became clearer the longer he stared, reflecting what little light was in the room. Those eyes were staring down at him, and Jonathan couldn't read the expression in them. The figure made no move toward him, no flicker of malice in its eyes, and the way the cold fingers trailed over the bandages was gentle. Concerned, if he wanted to ascribe emotions to contact.

"Go back to sleep, Jonathan."

He blinked. There was a faint glow of light from out of his line of sight, and within his vision, Linda was leaning over him, one hand on his arm and the other at his wrist, fingers pressed against the point where his pulse was thumping. There was a stethoscope around her neck and, when he forced his eyes to move, a clipboard lying on the cot beside him. The infirmary, unless a nurse was in his room examining him, and given how short staffed Arkham was where nurses—or guards, or doctors, or anyone—were concerned, that wasn't likely unless he'd come down with the plague. He didn't think the plague would result in bandages over his arms. Granted, the plague wasn't his area of study, but he doubted he could come up with a reason as to why it would result in such haphazard bandaging even if his mind was working at full speed.

Why was he in the infirmary?

"It's the middle of the night." There was a rustling sound like birds' wings. Or bats'. It wasn't until Linda returned to his field of vision, clipboard in hand that he realized she'd been writing. One hand reached out to pull the blankets back over him, resting on his shoulder before she brought it back up. "I'll turn out the light. You need to sleep, okay? It'll help."

He opened his mouth, not to say yes or no but to ask what he was doing here, or what the bandages were for, or why, judging from the feel of the blanket against his body, his socks and pants were missing. Maybe it was a fever. That would explain the spinning, as well as the complete loss of memory as to when he'd gotten sick and how he arrived there. He hoped it was a fever. Fevers were easier than the plague, usually.

But Linda had moved on and the light switched off and his eyes were refusing to stay open, so he let them shut. It was better when everything was dark; it wasn't cold, he wasn't missing his socks, or worrying about bandaging on his arms when he couldn't see it. Likewise, why and how he'd ended up in the infirmary ceased to be an issue when he let himself slip under the fog, where he couldn't remember that he was in an infirmary, or even a bed. He didn't have to struggle to keep his eyes open, or worry about the meaning of dreams with Batmen scrutinizing him as he lay disoriented. And it would have to be a dream, because Linda wouldn't allow strange men to break into the infirmary and track in all the germs of the Gotham streets that had to reside in the grooves of those Kevlar boots. Not unless they stopped by during visiting hours, which, last he checked, were not in the middle of the night. No, Linda wouldn't tolerate such an absurdity.

He wondered, as he let himself go back into the darkness, if Linda knew about the tigers in the nurses' station, and if she disapproved of them.

* * *

AN: As I only discovered just now, after writing a chapter with the song as the quote, that a common interpretation of "Dream Weaver" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=2Hdx9JjzDfo&feature=related) is that it's about a succubus. Which is not at _all _what I had in mind while I was writing this, but I suppose it makes for a rather lulzy interpretation of the chapter.

A suicide smock is something often given to those on suicide watch in prisons or hospitals. It's too thick to tear and make a noose out of, too thick to burn well, with Velcro straps so there are no zippers to cut with, and shoulder seams that give out under strain so that the arm or neck holes also can't be used as a noose. The smocks tend to be soothing colors, like navy blue or green.


	32. Going Nowhere

AN: Today I mentioned in passing to my friend that Bruce Wayne's middle name is Anthony, to which he responded, "Bruce Anthony Wayne? So his initials are BAW? As in, baaaaaaaaw, my parents are dead?" I love my friends.

This was another chapter that was meant to be longer and ended up split.

I know that Tears for Fears are the original writers/performers of "Mad World," but I was thinking of/listening to the Gary Jules cover as I wrote this chapter, hence why I attributed the quote to his version.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces;

Bright and early for their daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere."

—Gary Jules, "Mad World"

"I'm not letting you wake him up."

Joan stood in front of Jonathan's cot, hands on her hips, as though both detectives weren't competently trained in removing bystanders from the area and as though one of them wasn't built like an ox. Judging by the way Bullock's face had been steadily reddening since she'd told them in no uncertain terms that there would be no questioning until Jonathan woke up naturally, he might well have the temper to match. "Look, doc, we're just trying to do our job—"

"I'm doing mine." Joan kept her posture rigid, defiant, despite her body practically begging to sink onto the nearest cot and sleep until the GPD was gone. Until everything had blown over, and life was as close to normal again as it could ever be. She'd had two hours worth of sleep last night at best; pouring over every word of her notes on Jonathan's sessions until she passed out with the file in her hands. Joan had searched for a sign of Jonathan's plans; any detail, however minute, that she could have overlooked. She'd found one before she went home. The police had searched Jonathan's cell yesterday. They'd found a pack of cigarettes sandwiched between the books and an assortment of pills hidden inside his pillow, through a small tear in the fabric. Jeremiah Arkham had told her. Shouted it at her. Said in not so many words that it was her fault for making the privacy request.

Knowing he was right stung more than the accusation ever could.

"And it's my job to ensure his well-being." She moved her eyes for a split-second, glancing at Jonathan before darting back. He showed no signs of rousing. Not yet. "Do you think startling him out of sedation to question him about a traumatic experience is going to—"

"To question him about a murder."

And here she'd thought it wasn't possible to resent Bullock's presence any more. "You've got the toxicology reports back already, then?" It would have been tough talk if the poisoning weren't a foregone conclusion by this point. Waiting for the blood tests to confirm the poisoning was little more than a formality. Jonathan had killed Lotter. His illness didn't change the fact that a man was dead, and the fact that said man had raped him didn't negate the crime, even if the circumstances helped to explain it. Lotter was dead by Jonathan's hand, and it made Joan's blood run cold, but there was a time and a place to deal with the situation, and it wasn't in the aftermath, when her patient would be at his most fragile.

"Doctor Leland, I understand your concerns." Bullock's partner—Montoya, if Joan had heard her correctly, but she'd only been half-listening—stepped forward, speaking for the first time since they'd introduced themselves at the door. Joan hadn't paid her much attention, but she was calm and respectful where her partner was impatient and abrasive, and Joan felt her respect for the woman rise, if only for the sheer reason that she wasn't him. "But let me assure you that we'll try and make this as painless as possible for everyone involved."

_She _might. From the look of her partner, Joan was sure he enjoyed making things painful. It was stereotyping and unfairly projecting her emotions about the situation onto him, but she couldn't bring herself to rectify the behavior even as she acknowledged it. Sometimes life needed a scapegoat to make things bearable, and this was one of these times.

Jonathan shifted on the bed.

"It's police procedure," Montoya continued. "Believe me, it would make our jobs easier if we could skip this. But we can't go back without a statement, and we're going to have to talk to him."

Joan bit back the urge to tell them where they could shove their procedure. Jonathan was _non compos mentis,_ as decided by the same system that had invented police practice. The same law that had classified him as out of his mind now wanted his statement. Yes, there was a difference between hearing his word and taking it at face value, but Joan wasn't in the mood to be generous. "I understand that. What I'm saying is that you're not going to get anything out of him while he's sedated, and you're only going to waste your time and upset him if you try."

Bullock made a show of checking his watch. It took effort not to snort. When he'd been up all night dealing with this, then he could complain. "And how long'll it be 'til it's out of his system?"

"I don't know." She watched the frustration grow on his features and almost mustered the energy to smile. "He's slept for a full day on sedation before, so he might not—"

Jonathan chose that moment to sit up, because that was just the sort of life Joan led.

"We'll make this quick." Montoya moved around her before Joan could protest, pulling the chair Teresa had placed by the cot to the foot of the bed so she could sit. Jonathan had to steady himself with his arms, and his confused expression suggested that a good portion of his mind was still sleeping, but to Joan's dismay, he still managed eye contact with the detective. "Jonathan? I'm Detective Montoya. I need to ask you about what went on yesterday, all right? You're not under arrest, and you don't have to answer, but you can if you want."

Jonathan removed one hand from the support of the cot to pull on the smock. His eyes were no longer on her, and when he spoke, the words were slurred. "This isn't mine."

"They had to change your uniform yesterday," Montoya explained, as Jonathan moved on to examining the bandages. "It got dirty. Do you remember how?"

His feet shifted under the blankets, and Jonathan straightened, a look of alarm crossing his face.

"Jonathan?" Joan didn't care if it was interfering with police procedure; she wasn't about to let a man who already needed medication for his blood pressure and hyperventilated at sudden sounds work himself up into a panic attack. God only knows what awful memories had been pulled to the surface. "What's wrong?"

"I—" He swallowed, his look of terror replaced with mere apprehension. Joan still didn't like it. "Where are my socks?"

Joan put a hand over her mouth to conceal her smile as Montoya leaned back in her chair. Behind her, Bullock sighed. "I'll bring you a pair, Jonathan." She patted him on the shoulder once before straightening up, and faced the detectives. "I should point out that awake doesn't mean coherent where sedatives are concerned."

"I'll keep that in mind." Montoya checked her watch as she stood. "Come on, Bullock. Let's get lunch."

* * *

"Well?"

Ruth finished recording the date on her notepad and raised her head. The Joker had his legs swung over one arm of the chair as usual, and leaned against the other arm, back cracking. He remained in that position once he'd stretched as far as he could go, head tilted to regard her from upside-down. "Well what?"

He licked his lips. Either he'd been using the chapstick more frequently or his lips had become immune to the friction, as they were no longer peeling. "Aren'tcha gonna lecture me?"

_As if it would make a bit of difference. _And even if it would, she didn't want to. It wasn't that she hadn't been furious when the orderlies had reported the cause of the flooding, and Lord knows Jeremiah Arkham had laid into her, because apparently she was responsible for his actions when he was in a cell alone and unsupervised. She'd thought, as the water damage was unfolding and the patients were being transported, that her day couldn't possibly get any worse, and she'd planned to let the Joker have it, as though a reprimand would have any effect.

But then Joan had discovered Jonathan and Lotter's corpse in the broom closet, and Ruth's hardships had been thrown into perspective fast enough to give her whiplash. The Joker had flooded a few rooms. Jonathan had killed someone, and nothing Ruth said had in an attempt to comfort had provided the slightest solace to Joan. She couldn't imagine what it felt like to be in her colleague's shoes right now; only prayed that she'd never have to experience it. "I'm not going to yell about it, Joker."

His mouth drew down as he sat back up. "Why not? It'd be fun."

"What went through your mind when you did that?"

"Uh." The Joker wound a lock of hair between his fingers, staring cross-eyed at his progress as he moved. "That'd it make things inte_rest_ing?"

"You weren't at all concerned about injuring yourself or damaging the room in the process?"

He shrugged. "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few toilets, Ruthie."

She didn't try to decipher that. "But did you think about those things at all?"

Ruth had never noticed how much the Joker looked like a dog shaking out its fur when he shook his head. Had he always moved that way, or was he imitating Gilda? "I, uh, tend to look after I leap."

So she'd observed. He described scratching himself in much the same manner, as well as most of his other behaviors that made her want to tear her hair out and smack him in the back of the head. Never something he thought through until after the fact, and usually motivated by boredom. "Did flooding the room make you happy?"

Another shrug. "Wouldn't know. They hauled me out before I could really ex_per_ience it."

"From what I've observed, you do things without fully thinking about the consequences when you're bored, and you never seem satisfied with the end result."

His tongue darted out at his scars as he considered it. "What's your point, Ruthie?"

There were two paper cups on the desk, hidden from the Joker's line of sight by her desk phone. One held water. The other held two pills. Ruth took a cup in either hand and brought them to the front of the desk. "My point is that I think you'd benefit from medication to help you control that boredom."

"Absolutely not." The Joker's smile had faded. That wasn't something she often saw.

"I'm not going to _force _you into it. I just want you to consider—"

"I've considered it before, and the answer's no. I like zombie movies, but I don't want to _become _one."

"That's not what would happen, Joker." She knew it was a futile argument. He wasn't going to accept that medication could make a difference any more than a toddler would understand that he needed bad-tasting medicine to feel better. Treating the Joker was like running on a treadmill; no matter how much work she did, she hadn't moved at all.

"Right. 'Cause Jonathan Crane was so functional when first we met."

"He was on morphine in the infirmary. It's not the same." She took the white pill from the cup and held it out so he could see it. "This is lithium. It makes your moods more stable and it's been used to treat mania since the sixties."

"It was also used in the forties to treat heart disease until doctors realized it was deadly." The Joker crossed his arms. "And it causes weight gain and hypothyroidism."

Wonderful. So now he knew about pharmacology. Ruth wouldn't be surprised if he'd studied up on it just in case a conversation like this arose. "Those aren't common side effects. And we'd be monitoring your body if you started to take it. If you have adverse reactions, we could take you off the drug or try a new one."

"So I can spend the rest of my life shuffled from one drug to the nex_t._ Thank you but no."

"Joker—"

"So, how's Elizabeth? I heard she went to the movies with Jacob last weekend."

Ruth stared. She knew that he was trying to distract her, but damn it, it was working. The fact that he knew gossip about an orderly he'd never met wasn't something she could let pass without comment. "And you would know that how?"

"You'd be surprised how much you can learn just by, uh, listening to conversations. People talk." He tilted his head back toward the orderly's behind his chair. "I can tell you if they're married, how many kids they have, the kids' names, and on and on. And I just spent half a day in the rec room with nothing better to do than listen to everyone's gossip. Did you know Claire's having a hysterectomy and Zachary's daughter turned three on Sunday?"

He retained information like a sponge held water. Knowing her luck, that was a terrible sign. Bad or good, being lured into talk about the nurses' love lives wouldn't progress her argument. Ruth held up the orange pill. "This is Thorazine."

"And it turns your skin blue. No thanks."

"No, it doesn't, and anyway, you wouldn't be on it for long. Lithium takes a month or so to kick in on its own. The Thorazine is only there to help it along. It suppresses the flood of dopamine in your brain that makes you act out faster than lithium on its own."

His brows furrowed. "Ruthie, you know we've got less than a week, right?"

"I'm asking for an extension." It felt like a kick in the stomach, admitting that. Logically, there was no shame in it. The Joker was beyond a difficult patient, and some cases took longer to unravel than others. It made sense that someone so complex and resistant would take more time. But emotionally, it was a failure on her part, just as she was failing to persuade him to this. "Look, the most this will do is make you feel sleepy."

"Like I said, zombi_fic_ation."

"It'll wear off after a few days."

"The drowsiness, yeah." He brought his feet up onto the seat of the chair, resting his arms on his knees. "It'd still be altering my mind. And I happen to _like _my mind the way it is."

Was there a polite way to tell him that no one else did? "You like scratching your face open because you can't tolerate boredom?"

"Maybe if you gave me something to do instead of leaving me in a cell all _day_, I wouldn't be bored."

"I don't like leaving you in the cell either." Honestly, leaving the Joker unsupervised was like leaving a three year-old unsupervised, and anyone who thought it wasn't a recipe for disaster was either blind or stupid or both. "But that's hospital procedures for high security patients refusing medication. It's a safety measure. If you were taking medication, you'd be allowed more privileges."

There was a flash of curiosity in the Joker's eyes. He masked it within seconds, going back to his look of disinterest and disapproval, but she'd seen the crack in the armor. Now if only Ruth could pry it wider. "The rec room wasn't near as interesting as I'd hoped, Ruthie. Listening to nurses gossip while, uh, catatonics drool on themselves isn't my idea of a good time either."

"What about Gilda?"

Another flash in his eyes, but this time it was anger. "You know, if you want me to take your little pills, threatening to take my dog isn't about to do you any fav—"

"If you start on the medication, you can go outside without a straitjacket." The looking of dawning comprehension on his face was almost cute. "So you can pet her."

"You wouldn't do that." He was visibly struggling to conceal his longing, and Ruth was likewise struggling to restrain the desire to cheer. The Joker wanted it; that much was obvious. She'd set the incentive high enough. Now if he'd just take the bait. "They'd never allow it."

"At this point, I don't care if they approve or not." It wasn't a lie, and it helped that Dr. Arkham would be busy for weeks dealing with the murder. Using a man's death to her advantage might be wrong, but Ruth couldn't bring herself to be self-chastising. Not right now. "It's not as though I'd take you outside without orderlies, or the GPS. But your hands would be free, and you could pet Gilda. Is that a fair trade?"

The Joker didn't speak for a moment, or meet her eyes. That moment stretched into several, but right as Ruth was about to give up—and slam her head against the desk multiple times—the Joker's legs moved down so that his feet were on the floor again. He raised his hand, though he didn't move it toward the desk. "I can see her without the straitjacket?"

Ruth nodded.

"Today?"

"Tomorrow."

His hand, which had started a sluggish progression toward the desk, stopped cold. "Why tomorrow?"

"Because if the medications are working correctly, they'll put you to sleep the first time you take them." Her hands were clenched so tightly under the desk that her knuckles had gone white, wishing with all she had that this wouldn't dissuade him. _Let this work. This _has_ to work._ "And I want to monitor you to make sure you don't have a bad reaction. So it's safer to keep you inside."

The Joker didn't lower his hand, but he didn't move it either. "If I don't like it, do I have to keep taking it?"

"I'd like it if you'd stay on it for at least a week so we can see if it makes a difference. But if it really makes you unhappy, you don't have to continue."

The Joker considered it, then grabbed the cup without a word, raising it to his lips before she could congratulate or thank him. He tilted his head back and swallowed without the aid of the water, regarding her with displeasure once he was through.

"Could you open your mouth, please?"

He did. Ruth made a note to have him visit with the asylum's dentist—she shuddered for the poor man preemptively—but the pills were gone. "Thank you, Joker."

"You honestly think that drugging me's gonna fix everything?"

"No. But I think evening you out will help."

The Joker didn't say anything. He just sat, avoiding her eye and tapping on the arms of the chair in a quick, pounding rhythm that slowed, despite his efforts to fight it, as fatigue overpowered him, stopping altogether only once he was asleep.

* * *

AN: As I said, I was listening to the Gary Jule's cover (http:/ www. youtube. com/ watch?v=4N3N1MlvVc4) but I'm also linking the Tears for Fears original, because I don't think it gets enough recognition or credit. (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=nXuXikfIYHY). Despite the song's popularity after its use in _Donnie Darko_, I'd never heard it before last year when my sister linked me to a TDK music video that used the song, which you can (and I recommend you do) watch here: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=SwOiED16-j4&playnext_from=TL&videos=g9d1afJOh10 It's not the only Mad World Joker video out there, and it's not the whole song, but I love it and I think that it fits with the lyrics perfectly.

Thanks to DeviantArt user Jimothy-Bobert for informing me on the use of antipsychotics to jumpstart lithium. I'd missed that part in my own research on the drug.

The detectives being the Bullock and Montoya from the comics, of course. Did anyone else think Anna Ramirez was going to be Renee Montoya when she first showed up? I was confused as to why they'd make up a new character instead of using a similar, preexisting one until we found out about Anna's mob connections. And then it made perfect sense.


	33. If I Drown

AN: Happy Easter! I hope everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I will swallow if it will help my sea level go down.

I'll take a deep, deep breath, but I'll come back to haunt you if I drown."

—Emilie Autumn, "Swallow"

It took conscious effort to keep his eyes open, let alone follow Ruth down the hall. The Joker had never before been thankful for the orderlies' assumption that he couldn't walk on his own, and it wasn't a feeling he ever wanted to experience again. This was why he refused medication.

All right, it wasn't the main reason—he cared more about a chemical altering the processes of his brilliant mind than he was bothered by the chemical's side effects—but every moment he spent fighting to stay conscious brought it closer to the top of the list. Ruth had said it would make him tired. She hadn't said it would knock him out for verging on a full day and kept his mind dulled as a butter knife even after he woke up. It was a struggle to think at all, but once the Joker had managed to consider things, he came to the conclusion that he wasn't at all pleased with the medication. Or Ruthie.

"It's not a side effect, Joker." Because telling him this was the _intended _effect was going to endear him to her cause, apparently. As if knowing the drugs were meant to drown him in fatigue helped. "Thorazine is a sedative, and from what you've told me, you haven't been sleeping properly in weeks."

"Twenty hours is properly?" Speaking alone made him want to close his eyes. No wonder she was allowing him out of the hospital unrestrained. They could leave the gates open and the asylum's exterior unsupervised, and he still wouldn't be able to leave. He wanted to strangle her for it, but somewhere between his brain and his arms, the message had stopped for a nap.

He could use a nap.

"No. This is your body's way of catching up. It'll even out in a few days." She turned her head to look at him, regarding him with something more clinical than sympathetic. "If it doesn't, I'll lessen the dose. Just give it a few more days, all right?"

The Joker would give it a few minutes. Of concealment under his tongue, before the orderlies or nurses or whoever would be administering it left the room so he could spit it out into the toilet. Ruthie was delusional if she expected any less. "Why didn't you get the court order, uh, to force'em into me, Ruth? It'd be easier." Christ, if she said it was because she wanted him to trust her, he _would _find a way to strangle her. Someone that intelligent—as far as ordinary people went—shouldn't be stupid enough as to think he'd trust anyone whose career was in any way dependent on his "progress."

"Honestly?" She met his eyes again; stopped walking. "I was going to go to court for that. Two days ago. But the police wouldn't let any employees leave the premises after they arrived, and Dr. Arkham needed our attorney here more than out there advocating to medicate you."

_Oh. _She was moving again. The Joker didn't bother to attempt walking this time. Let the orderlies haul him. _It's not like they've got anything better to do. _What a life that had to be; standing on guard all day, only intermittent with the times they got to drag people down halls. It'd be sad if he could be bothered to care. So Ruthie would have ignored "no means no" and doped him anyway. He had a feeling he'd be angry about that when he could bring himself to care.

He watched Ruth's shoes, black and boring as always—though she'd finally polished over that scuff—make their progress down the hall. Cracked and yellowed from age as the tiles were, whoever mopped the floors here still had pride in their jobs, and he watched as the reflection of her shoes reached the reflection of her door. Then breezed past it.

"Missed your stop." She had, hadn't she? Christ on water-skis, if her innocent little medications had compromised his ability to recognize his surroundings, then Ruthie wasn't the only one who was going to feel his wrath. The hospital would be lucky if anyone was left standing. Once he had the energy back to get around to the berserker rage. At the moment, the most he could manage was a growl. Maybe a menacing grimace.

"We're having the session outside today."

"Is your office being, uh, fumigated or something?"

"No. You'll get the medication again at the end of the session, so I figured that if it put you to sleep through the afternoon again, it would be best to let you see your dog now."

That was the first thing she said today that hadn't made him feel vaguely murderous. There was an unpleasant twinge in his stomach, though. The Joker couldn't tell if it was nerves or if he'd moved in a way that had disturbed his new bruises. Either the lithium-Thorazine cocktail made him thrash violently in his sleep, or Hadley had stopped by while he was down for the count, because he'd awoken to a stiff and aching body that was almost as purple as his trench coat in some places. He was inclined to say it was the drugs, because no orderly could possibly be _that _stupid, but then, this was Hadley. "What if Gilda doesn't realize we're out there this early?"

"I'm sure it'll be fine."

Of course she was sure. It wasn't _her _dog.

There was still dew on the grass and, this being Gotham, it was about a degree away from freezing. Unpleasant, but feeling the cold water seep through the thin fabric of his jumpsuit when he sat made staying awake a modicum easier, so he couldn't complain. "I don't see her."

"We've only been outside for a minute, Joker. Give her time." Ruth's hand brushed against his shoulder, swiping a bruise and making the skin flame with pleasure and pain. She never touched him when he wasn't restrained by the straitjacket, unless she was smacking his hand away from something. So the drugs made her feel more comfortable around him. The Joker decided that didn't count as a perk unless he got to cop a feel as a result.

Her one minute stretched into two. Five. Eight. He knew because he was counting seconds in his head, though, admittedly, he kept being distracted by the slightest sound or shift of shadows or his eyes closing involuntarily, so his count might not be the most accurate measure. It didn't matter. There was no sign of Gilda. His chance to pet her, to hug her instead of sitting and letting her nudge up against him, and she had no clue that he was on the premises. His eyelids were drooping again, but this time, he made no effort to fight it. Knowing his luck, Ruthie would lose her plea for an extension, he'd be shifted off to Blackgate, and he'd have lost his only chance. Far off, Ruth said his name, but he couldn't bring himself to care. It wasn't that he could break out of prison, of course. He didn't know of any institution that could restrain him if he put his mind to escape. But if he was gone, the orderlies would go back to trying to catch her, and she'd be shipped off to a shelter somewhere while he was struggling to file through prison bars. She'd—

Something pressed against his hand. Something cold and wet. And firm, too firm to be grass that his hand had brushed against.

There was a race of adrenaline through his body, and apparently, the drugs didn't suppress adrenaline like dopamine, because his eyes flew open, taking in every detail. Ruth, standing at his right. The orderlies behind her, staring off as if this wasn't the greatest moment in the world since Bats had stopped him from plummeting to his death. The bushes in need of trimming, the grass in need of water, and Gilda, seated at his other side, tail swishing back and forth in the grass. "Puppy!"

Gilda jumped up at the same moment he leaned down, resulting in a mid-air collision with the Joker twisting to avoid landing on her as she started licking his face during the descent. He landed on his side—if that rib hadn't been cracked already, it certainly was now—but the pain, fun and reviving as it was, was quickly shunted to the side, because he could _hold_ the dog now, feel the layer of fat that had grown to conceal her ribs, he could hug her to repay the comfort of her presence and her loyalty in arriving day after day despite his inability to recuperate, despite that he wasn't the one to feed her, and despite the orderlies' efforts to drive her away. This was better than blowing up the hospital, or watching the devastation on the Chechen's face once he'd ignited the money. There _might _be a way to improve the moment, but he didn't want to dwell on it even if there was.

"_Good _girl. Good dog." His head rubbed against hers like a cat as she licked at his face, his hands petting her coat and rubbing her stomach as her tail thumped against his legs, and if he got fleas, it would be worth it. He could pet her, and he did, and when the orderlies lifted him to bring him back inside, he couldn't even bring himself to care that Ruth herself supervised the medication, and checked to ensure that he wasn't holding them under his tongue. Because the experience had more than compensated for the drugs.

* * *

It always got worse.

That was how Joan would describe her interactions with Jonathan. It always got worse. They'd been coworkers. Then she'd found out that he was insane, torturing his patients, and planning to poison the entire city. And while she was reeling from all of that, he'd gone missing. Then he'd been returned to the asylum, and it was clear that the exposure to his toxin hadn't done his mental state any favors. And she'd been assigned to treat him, despite a conflict of interests so massive it was probably visible from space. And right as they'd begun approaching anything resembling progress, Jonathan had been raped, and they were back at square one. No, they were _before _square one. Absolutely no communication beyond what she could provoke through anger, which was rarely coherent. Then he'd murdered his rapist.

And now that he'd recovered from the sedatives, this.

"These socks don't match," Jonathan announced to no one in particular. "Tell me, have you searched the laundry attendants for drug possession, psychiatric or otherwise? Because I _hope _they're using illicit substances, to be doing this poor of a job."

Bullock stared at Joan, as if she could discern his meaning; if he even meant anything beyond that his socks weren't properly paired. Whatever sanity he'd managed to hold onto seemed to have leaked out in that broom closet. If he'd had any at all. Maybe he'd just done an extraordinarily good job of hiding the damage up to that point, and couldn't be bothered to carry on the masquerade any longer.

"Did the laundry attendants supply you with the drugs?" Montoya asked. The tape player sitting on her lap was on and recording, though Joan doubted it would capture anything worthwhile.

Jonathan didn't say anything, return to tugging on his bandages. Judging by his behavior ever since he'd woken up yesterday morning, that seemed to be his new favorite hobby. Joan would find it worrying—well, more worrying that everything else—but he didn't make any real attempt to remove them.

"Jonathan?" she prompted, once a minute had passed in silence.

He raised his head, pushing his glasses up on the brim of his nose. His brows furrowed behind the lenses. "When did you come in?"

"I've been here since the detectives arrived, Jonathan."

"Oh." For a moment, he looked displeased; not quite alarmed, but close. It was gone the next second, replaced by the same cool disinterest he'd shown in so many conversations as a psychiatrist. "You cut your hair."

"No, I haven't." It would be an awkward enough conversation without two of Gotham's finest regarding her patient as though they were concerned that they might need to start backing away slowly.

"Oh," he said again, and tilted his head. "You should consider it. Unless you're trying to grow it out. In which case, carry on. Did you want something?"

"Detective Montoya asked you a question."

Jonathan glanced between the two of them. "About laundry attendants?"

Montoya nodded.

"I answered it."

And to think there'd been a time when she'd been naïve enough to believe that his illness would be so much simpler to unravel if she could get him to speak. Every time he opened his mouth, the mess became that much more tangled. It wasn't that she wasn't grateful for the insight. But it threw the daunting task before her into a clearer light than she felt at all ready for. "No, Jonathan, you didn't."

"That's a matter of opinion," he muttered, shifting on the cot to face away from her. "Would _you _trust someone who can't even grasp that I'm meant to be wearing an orange jumpsuit—" He pulled on the smock. "—to understand the difference between a butyrophenone and a phenothiazine?"

"Then where'd the drugs come from?" Bullock's tone was about as smooth as sandpaper, and if he lost his temper, Joan wasn't sure she'd be able to handle it without throwing both of them out.

Jonathan had likewise noticed the detective's wavering composure, but it didn't trouble him in the least. "You don't seem to be a very patient person. Perhaps you suffer from chronophobia. That's the fear of—"

"How were you getting the drugs, Jonathan?"

"Do you read Rowling?" Unlike Bullock, he regarded Montoya, with more respect than he would give an unpleasant substance coating the bottom of his shoe, but only just. "_Pipes._" Something in his statement must have struck him as extraordinarily funny, because he shoved a hand over his mouth to muffle his giggles while the detectives' eyes, once again, turned to her.

Joan shrugged, which she figured made a better impression than saying "I have absolutely no idea in hell."

"Great. Three days, and all we've got is gibberish." Bullock shut his eyes, running his hand down his down his face and said days' growth of stubble. "The Commissioner's gonna love this."

"Then again," said Jonathan, once he managed to restrain himself, "you're also showing signs of kakorrhaphiophobia, or the fear of failue. Have you considered—"

"Have you considered how much worse things could get for you if you don't assist us?" Bullock fired back, and if there had been a desk in front of him for him to slam his hand down on, Joan was sure he'd have done it.

There was a long pause in which Jonathan stared. He didn't look intimidated or angered. He didn't have any expression at all. "Are you…" He faltered, and the corners of his mouth began to drift up. "Are you actually trying to play bad cop? _Really_? As if that isn't the oldest trick—" That was as far as he got before he collapsed against the cot, helpless with laughter.

Bullock didn't look amused.

The increase in communication was supposed to give her insight into his mind, lessen the sense that she was trying to swim upstream when it came to treating him. But this wasn't weakening the current; it was opening the floodgates. "Jonathan."

"B-but it's s-so _stupid_," he managed, and lost himself to giggling once more.

Today wasn't going to pass quickly.

* * *

"Clown."

There was a sound through the fog, and from what he could hear of the sound—which wasn't much; it seemed to becoming from far away and through something thick and viscous, maybe molasses—it might have been a voice. Might have been forming words. But whatever it was, it seemed tiny and insignificant, and he was calm where he was, resting. The sound wasn't worth the effort it would take to listen. He tried to ignore it, but there was a sudden force against his chest, and that made it harder to drift back. He felt his eyes flutter in spite of his best efforts.

"Hey, clown." It was a voice. "Clown. Hey, _freak._"

A voice. It was definitely a voice, and familiar, though he couldn't place it.

Another force against his chest. There was pain with this one, enough to make sparks light in his eyes. And the source of such force seemed distinctly boot-shaped. His eyes flew open.

Hadley smirked down at him.

So he _was _that stupid.

"You…don' have…an'thing better to…do than…beat on the un—" No, he couldn't manage unconscious. Talking had never been so hard. "Sleepin' people?"

Nailed him in the stomach that time. The Joker rolled back against the wall and struggled to sit up. He almost succeeded. One thing could be said for the pain; it sharpened his senses. He was surprised he'd woken up at all, considering the amount of sedatives that must still be coursing through his system.

Hadley was alone again. Maybe his friends had wised up about harassing the patients after Jonny's little outburst. Or maybe they recognized how pathetic it was to beat up on someone completely unable to realize what was going on. He guessed the former. "Jus' you 'gain? I'm startin' to feel…unloved."

"Just me?" Somehow, his smug smile had gone wider. The Joker wouldn't have thought that was physically possible without a set of his scars. "Your boy toy don't count?"

He managed to sit up. Ruthie was right. He had to be adjusting to the sedatives. Even his own, incredible resolve wouldn't be enough to manage this otherwise. "The hell?"

"Zachary. Or are you going to pretend that he didn't just come out of your cell?"

Zachary had been in here? Come to think of it, he had missed the twitchy guy's reports on feeding Gilda for the past two nights. Asleep from the drugs…so Zachary hadn't risked waking him up. Well, that was just lazy. He'd have to have a stern talk with the guy. "Well, I wouldn' know…bein' _asleep_ 'n all."

"Wouldn't have thought he was your type." God, he was especially ugly when he was gloating. Maybe appearance really did reflect personality. It would explain the Joker's own flawless beauty. "I mean, the _Batman _was a big guy, right?"

Something snapped in the Joker, and though it was deep beneath the haze of the drugs, he felt it in perfect detail. He'd _dared _to speak about the Batman, as if he was worthy to even _think _the name. Not only that, but he'd implied they were lovers. And while it was true that the Batman could, if he was so inclined, have the Joker over every available surface, it was one thing to recognize their connection, and quite another to imply that it was something perverse. Something derogatory. It was an insult to his manhood and his power, and it made the Joker's blood boil.

"Then again, maybe you're not the one taking it up the tail pipe."

"Didn'…" The Joker shook his head, and enunciated with some effort. "Didn't your mommy ever tell you…if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all?"

"Didn't your mommy ever tell you that faggots burn in hell?"

The flood of adrenaline was back, backed by anger, and the Joker pounced.

* * *

AN: Here's Swallow (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=YKhvlW_P3q0). Emilie Autumn's another of my favorite artists. Her style is so different.

Jonathan's mental state isn't actually that different than it was before. He's still forgetting whether or not he said things aloud, seeing things in odd, shifting perspectives (Joan's hair), and having racing, bizarre thoughts, but he's suppressed his fear/need for composure, so he's a lot more vocal and doesn't bother to conceal his difficulties. His line about "pipes" is in reference to JK Rowling's _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,_ as well as his own plan with Thomas and the pills, and his stating of phobias was borrowed from his cameo in the Sandman comics.


	34. Look at What Well Meant Did

AN: Sorry for the delay on this chapter. The good news is, that I've got the rest of the fic planned out from here, so things should be going more smoothly from here on out. Hopefully, anyway.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"No good deed goes unpunished; all helpful urges should be circumvented.

No good deed goes unpunished; sure, I meant well—well, look at what well-meant did."

—"No Good Deed," _Wicked_

The Joker was not a particularly graceful individual when it came to physical combat.

With a knife in hand, he was an artist, sliding the blade effortlessly between his fingers and through sinew. He knew all the veins and arteries of the body and could slice through one of them with barely a glance at his victim, and go from loping off tissue to simply ripping off skin with only the barest shift in pressure. With a gun, he was more than competent. True, he didn't regard silly little things like safe handling practices, and had, on multiple occasions, nearly blown bits of himself off when he got a little too excited with the weapon, but he could hit his target. Near where he'd intended if not always dead-on, and that was good enough for his purposes. Sometimes, the message mattered more than the manner in which it was delivered.

Should he find himself lacking either of those means of destruction, and without a detonator, the Joker was nothing if not resourceful. Under his skillful hands, anything could be a weapon. Anything, included but not limited to Brillo pads, flower vases, lemon wedges, fabric paint, and bed sheets. But the bed sheets here were made to hinder suicide attempts and thus tore like tissue paper if forced to support too much weight, and the bed frame was bolted to the floor, so his options were limited to hand to hand combat. He wasn't _bad _at it, per se—he was very good at beating and beating until all that was left could be stuffed inside of a tuna can and fed to cats—but where most people who have a strategy such as "go for the throat" or "give him a concussion," the Joker's tried and true approach was more along the lines of "flail wildly until they stop moving or I start slipping on all their blood." It was an effective method, but it tended to lead to a lot of smacking around on his part as well, particularly when he wasn't well-balanced.

Such as right now, when the drugs in his system had thrown him decidedly off-kilter.

The Joker leapt up like an enraged tiger in asylum attire and white socks, at which point his roaring rampage of revenge was put to an abrupt halt when his vision went dark from the sudden movement, and he received a none-too-gentle shove back to the floor. _Ouch._ He'd never thought he would miss the padded cell, but the same treatment in cinderblock and tile blew that out of the water. He couldn't even take the time to enjoy the sensation, as he was too busy being furious and mortified about being taken down by a _shove_, of all things. How undignified. Ruthie would have to die for this, unless she found a way to make it up to him, preferably with scented oils and nudity. And hot candle wax. But Ruth was way too much of a stick in the mud to go for that, so she'd have to settle for having her esophagus removed with a crazy straw.

The Joker blinked, and the world cleared. Hadley was towering over him with that shit-eating grin on his face. _Joy. _Maybe he hadn't regained his sight after all, and this was some prophetic vision of hell. No, even Satan had better interior designers than Arkham.

"That's all you've got?"

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans. He wasn't actually stupid enough to think that he'd just succeeded where Batman and the entire GPD had failed by knocking over someone under sedation, was he? What an idiotic question. Of course he was. If Creationists ever wanted definitive proof that man was not an evolved creature, they needn't look any further than this sack of hammers. "Not hardly."

Hadley was an idiot. There was no arguing against it. More than an idiot; the lowest common denominator of humanity. Painfully stupid, and a sadist who got his kicks by beating up people who couldn't fight back. Normally, that was something he'd only roll his eyes at, but normally, he didn't have someone so utterly worthless daring to presume that he held power over the Clown Prince of Crime. The Catholics were right; presumption was a dreadful sin. And Hadley was going to pay dearly for it. Hell, he was standing in the snare right now and there was nothing but his stupidity and overconfidence to keep him from seeing it.

The Joker may be graceless, but the morons like this made things easier. At least the clown could disguise his shifts in posture, the minute changes in weight distribution that made the next move blindingly obvious to anyone trained to look for it. He wasn't particularly good at it—disguising his movements was half of what threw him so off balance—but he got the job down, whereas Hadley's plan might as well be flashing over his head in neon red lights. He was going to try and kick.

How typical. He tensed his body, waited.

Hadley's foot swung forward. The Joker's arms shot out at the same time, and he watched his hands close around the bastard's ankle as if in slow motion. At the same time, he twisted his body, swinging his own feet toward Hadley's supporting leg. The right one made contact with the side of the orderly's knee, and the left, just below that, and Hadley crumpled like an origami crane in a paper press. He hit the floor hard, and judging from the resounding thunk, his head had grazed the bed frame.

"You know, flatte_ring_ as your courting calls are, I'm really getting sick of them."

His grip on Hadley's ankle was vice-like, and he jumped forward as if playing a demented form of Leap Frog before he let go, crashing down on the other's chest. The air was forced out of the orderly like wind from a bellows, and the Joker stopped for the slightest second to relish the sound before his fists were raining blows down over Hadley's ribs, and what he could reach of his stomach. An eye for an eye. And then maybe a kidney. And a spleen. Or a small intestine. After all, they had the whole night to themselves. "I mean, I'd, uh, already kinda guessed this, given your career choice, but you're not all that bright, are ya?"

Recovering from the sudden loss of oxygen, Hadley began to struggle beneath him, body shifting and hands digging into whatever part of the Joker's skin stayed in place long enough for him to gain a temporary hold on. "G…get off of me, frea—"

He brought one hand down, open and across the orderly's increasingly pale, sweaty face. It would leave a bruise. Good. It didn't take a psychiatry degree to know that Hadley got off on exerting power of those who couldn't fight back. A visible reminder of his failure to do that would hurt like nothing else. Except death. _Somebody doesn't like it when the tables are turned._ "I'm really getting sick of that word, too. Honestly, honeybunch, I take it no one's ever told you to let sleeping dogs lie?"

Hadley's eyes were positively burning with hatred, which was all the Joker had time to register about his expression before one of the orderly's fists shot up, catching his lip. The skin split, and the Joker felt warm blood flow into his mouth. A quick swipe of the tongue revealed that his teeth were still intact. Good. If another had been chipped, the Joker would have no choice but to kill him. "You know that's like foreplay to me, right?"

He spat. He missed. "You—you fucking faggot freak—"

"Dirty talk," said the Joker, pressing his hands around Hadley's throat, "isn't my kink." He was shaking, and if Hadley's eyes had been burning, his must be shooting lasers. The Joker wasn't one to restrain himself. Whimpering, agonized screams, blood pouring out from the holes his knife had made excited him, and on more than one occasion, he'd ended up sending his men to dig body parts out of the carpet when he'd only set out to inflict a minor wound as a reminder. And if a minor infraction could lead to bloody death, calling him a faggot freak ought to be enough for total desecration.

He forced himself not to snap the shaking neck below him. Not out of any flickering of conscience, or the knowledge of how disappointed it would make Ruthie, but simply because it would be too fast. He wanted the bastard to stay conscious for all long as possible, and watch the life flicker from his eyes as the terror grew on his face. Also, strangulation was said to lead to erections, and there was nothing the Joker would relish more than knowing that someone as homophobic as Hadley died erect under another man.

The orderly's hands were on him again, nails raking over his arms and back in an increasingly weak attempt to free himself. He was making weak gasping sounds, like a fish out of the water, but they were growing weaker and weaker, from bass to minnow, as his face reddened. A blood vessel in his eye burst. The Joker's smile grew as Hadley's twitching diminished, until it became painful, so painful he saw sparks and what he could feel of his cheeks burned as if the long-closed wounds would tear right back open, but he couldn't care enough to bring himself to stop, much as he couldn't care that his giggles were growing increasingly louder. It wasn't as if anyone would overhear, and even if they did, they wouldn't have time to save their poor little orderly from clown-suffocation. Nothing was going to stop him.

At least, so he thought until he felt sudden warmth under his legs, accompanied by the faint but stinging scent of ammonia.

The Joker relaxed his grip, and looked down. Strangulation could cause an erection. It could also lead to an involuntary voiding of bodily fluids. In Hadley's case, pissing himself.

He didn't plan to let go. There was no conscious thought over the matter. One moment, the Joker was sitting on Hadley's thighs and choking the life out of him, and the next, he was curled up on the floor, laughing so hard he was fairly sure that he was bruising his ribs from the inside. "Th—th—that's n-not my kink e-e-either," he managed, tears streaming down his face as he shrieked with mirth. Never had schadenfreude been so entertaining. The "kill Hadley" plan had all fallen to the wayside by now. Consider it his good deed for the decade.

Hadley must have recovered enough to stand at some point, because there were blows hammering down on him, fists on his ribs and boots against his back and hands winding through his hair and scratching at his face and ripping out whatever they could. It wasn't enough to stop his laughter. Nuclear holocaust wouldn't be enough. Actually, that would only make things funnier.

"You're going to pay for that, clown. You'll pay for it. Just you wait." His voice was like a blunt ax to the spinal cord and considering that he was standing there soaking in his own urine, that just made it even better.

"L—long as it doesn't involve getting p-pissed on again," he forced out, before the giggling overpowered his vocal cords once more.

* * *

The Joker's face was scratched again.

It was more than his face. His arms bore scratches as well, spidering up and down all of his exposed skin. The cuts weren't deep, but they were numerous, and for once she was glad for the dog on his lap, because having Gilda there kept at least some of the damage out of Ruth's line of sight. It wasn't that she wanted to ignore it. But having a constant reminder of her failure made the blow of discovering his injuries all the more painful.

"Why did you do that to yourself?"

The Joker stopped cooing over his dog long enough to regard her. Ruth wasn't naïve enough to let herself believe for even a second that he was harmless. But with his lip split, his face looking as though he'd come off on the wrong end of a fight with a cat, and Gilda snuggling against his torso while he hugged her, he looked almost sympathetic. So damaged, and so oddly ordinary for someone whose idea of fun involved reckless endangerment, first degree murder, and destruction of property. Amazing, how humanizing a pet could make its master seem. "I, uh, thought we went through this, Ruthie. Remember the record?"

"You haven't done it for almost two months. And you've never scratched at your arms."

"Hey, Gilda." He scratched behind the dog's ears as she wiggled happily in his embrace, tail thwacking back and forth from his side to his arm. "Who's the best puppy in Gotham City?"

"Joker."

He shrugged, licking at his cracked lips. Teresa had looked positively ill at the damage done to him when Ruth had brought him in to have the cuts disinfected earlier that morning. Then again, Teresa always looked ill when Ruth saw her these days. Maybe Arkham hadn't been her best choice of employment. "I couldn't sleep."

"You can never sleep." It didn't add up. He was concealing the truth. Of course, _nothing_ the Joker said could be taken at face value, but she couldn't force her mind to make sense of this one. He'd gone for weeks without this behavior, ever since they'd threatened to restrain him at night. Why would he take it up again now that he had more privileges? "And I thought the medication made you drowsy."

"I'm adjusting, I think." He ran a hand through his hair and then returned it to Gilda's coat. "I woke up and I couldn't fall back asleep. I dunno, I was kinda woozy and it seemed like a good idea to pass the time."

Great. Just great. If he was being honest, the medication meant to level him out was bringing him back to self-destructive behaviors they'd worked through over a month ago. True, his body was still adjusting, and even if the prescription worked, it wouldn't be effective yet, but it still stung as though the injuries were her own. This was what happened when he finally took her advice. Her attempts to help led him right back to his old ways.

"You never smile, Ruthie."

She raised her head from Gilda—who'd managed to roll onto her back without leaving the Joker's lap, panting as he rubbed her stomach—and met his eyes. "Excuse me?"

"Look, I know you wanna fix me, but you can't obsess over it. You need to enjoy your life at least a little." He took her nearest hand and placed it on the dog's coat before she could pull away.

"I don't obsess." She ignored the Joker's scoff and gave Gilda a scratch behind the ears before rummaging through her purse for her hand sanitizer.

* * *

"When do I go back to my cell?"

Joan guided Jonathan's hand away from his bandages. It was the third time he'd pulled at them, and the session had only started ten minutes ago. She couldn't imagine how much of the nurses' day was spent trying to keep him from bothering his injuries, much as she couldn't hide her shock at his question. He wasn't looking in her direction, thankfully. In more lucid times, Jonathan hated to be gaped at, and she couldn't imagine that he would enjoy it any more now. "You want to go back there?"

"I want to be out of the infirmary." _Infirmary. _He was still mouthing words, but much less frequently. "It is a comfort in wretchedness to have companions in woe. Marlowe. Faust. Of course, he was talking about hell. But it applies equally to Arkham."

Jonathan Crane longing for the company of others. Well, now she'd seen everything. "You've got the nurses to talk to."

"Teresa," he said, either incapable of whispering or unable to comprehend that his voice carried, "doesn't get as close to me anymore. Traumatophobia, I think. Afraid I'll attack her."

"I'm sure she doesn't think that, Jonathan." Though she did seem more skittish as of late. Joan supposed it was only to be expected. Still, it didn't make Jonathan's stay here any easier, and as things were now, his stay was indefinite. She couldn't let him go back to his cell. Not now, when the other orderlies would still be out for blood, and God only knew how long that period would last. Short of camping out beside his door all night, there was no way she could feel assured in his safety, and no way she was letting him out of the relative safety of the infirmary.

"She does." He shot her a glance which the nurse pretended not to see , and then glared at his smock as though it were responsible for all of mankind's transgression since their fall from grace. "Someone who works with giant wild cats shouldn't be so timid."

"What?"

"And this isn't my uniform. Honestly, Joan, how are the laundry attendants still employed?"

She didn't try to explain "suicide watch" to him. He seemed to have blocked it out of his memory entirely, and she doubted he'd appreciate the implication even if he did allow himself to process it.

"Excuse me?"

"I didn't say anything, Jonathan."

"Oh." For a second, he looked almost alarmed, but then he pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose and his concern vanished. "Well, I don't like it in here."

_And you used to say that talking would make everything better. _Well, she had what she wanted. And, as so many children who found their Christmas presents early learned each year, getting what she wanted in any circumstances beyond the ideal sucked. "What if I brought your books in? Would that help?"

Speaking of Christmas, Jonathan's eyes lit up like a decorated tree, and while he wasn't smiling, he was closer to it than she'd seen in a long, long time. Not counting his giggling fit from the day before. "Thank you, Joan."

She'd never had to struggle so hard in order to restrain herself from hugging a patient before. "You're welcome, Jonathan."

* * *

AN: This is "No Good Deed": www. youtube. com/ watch?v=J9D7y0omnN4 I love _Wicked._

Yes, strangulation came cause voiding of the bowels/bladder and/or an erection. The human body is fun.

Jonathan's entire quote from Faust and the line afterwards about Hell and Arkham are, again, from _The Sandman._


	35. The Will to Act

AN: Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"The will is everything! The will to act."

—Ra's Al Ghul, _Batman Begins_

The murder had made the news.

No one was sure how; the Gotham Times refused to reveal their source for the story. Maybe it was one of Lotter's family members, determined that, even if Jonathan Crane was legally insane and therefore not responsible for his actions, _someone _would suffer in his place. Maybe it was a fellow orderly, also seeking justice. Or maybe it was just an employee or relative of a patient seeking a reward for a sensationalistic story. Either way, the media was eating it up, and Teresa couldn't so much as glance at a television or newspaper without seeing the story again and again and again.

She'd tried to make it through the news last night and ended up turning it off five minutes in, afraid that she'd vomit or develop ulcers or both.

Teresa knew that she had no right to complain. She wasn't one of the receptionists who had to deal with call after call from the patients' families, shouting about how this institution was supposed to keep their loved ones safe, not expose them to abuse and murder. She didn't have to reassure everyone of the patients' safety while going through both a police investigation and an inquiry from the funders, like Jeremiah Arkham. All she had to do was conduct physicals and carry bedpans, just like always. But knowing that she wasn't the one suffering the backlash didn't make her guilt any less powerful.

It didn't help that Jonathan was still in the infirmary. He set her hair on end—how could he _not_, after he'd killed an orderly?—but worse than that, he was a constant reminder of how far the orderlies had gone, and how much damage they'd inflicted on an already broken mind, damage that would have slipped by unpunished if Jonathan hadn't taken matters into his own hands. That couldn't happen now. Every orderly was being questioned for information pertaining to the murder, and the leash around them had become much shorter and tighter. Teresa had been naïve enough to hope that would fix things. To be fair, no one had come in with bruising the day after Lotter's body was found. She'd thought—hoped—that the others had been scared into behaving, and that the worst of her career at Arkham was behind her.

Then they'd brought in the Joker yesterday morning, whose abdomen looked as though it had been used as a punching bag, and whose arms looked as though he'd been in a fight with a bramble bush.

The orderlies hadn't stopped, only rested for a night or so. Out of respect for the dead, maybe. Whatever the reason, they were back at it and the Joker was suffering. He deserved it. But no matter how many times she told herself that, Teresa still couldn't stand to remember the injuries.

Things were changing. They'd have to, if the asylum wanted to keep running after such a fiasco. And if she reported it now, something might be done. It was a gamble, but the odds were better than they'd ever been before. Still, the Joker's continued abuse proved that the orderlies were persistent. Merciless. If Dr. Arkham didn't want to hear it, she could lose her job. But if they lost her jobs because of her, she could become a target. She was at a crossroads, and while one road had the moral high ground, both looked as though they could lead to misfortunate, and Teresa couldn't help but wonder if it wouldn't be better just to stay between.

But she could only stand at a crossroads for so long before she was crushed under the traffic.

* * *

"Are your friends coming back, or have they already asked all their tedious questions?"

Joan didn't tell him that the detectives were hardly friends of hers. She wasn't sure how suggestible he was between the brain damage and the emotional trauma—very, if how easily the Joker had been able to fluster him when they spoke was any indication—and she didn't need to put the idea in his head that law enforcement meant "bad." It wasn't an association she needed in her own mind. The GPD did what they could in a city this rotten, and even if their attempts led to less than desirable decisions, such as allowing a vigilante in bat ears to practice his own idea of "justice," their efforts should be appreciated.

Unless those efforts led to Jonathan being incarcerated at Blackgate. Then, they were evil through and through. "I think they got what they needed to know."

"I suppose their standards were low," he muttered, trying to smooth out a crease in the smock. It was impossible without an iron, given the thickness of the fabric, but he kept at it as though lives hung in the balance.

"How are you, Jonathan?" Today was the most—well, not lucid, but grounded—she'd seen him ever since he'd woken up from the sedatives after the murder. He was still repeating a few words under his breath, and occasionally his eyes followed things she couldn't see, but he'd followed the conversation without going off on tangents or whispering to himself or any of his other troubling methods. She tried not to get her hopes up.

"I didn't sleep." As Linda had reported in the night log. Joan was loathe to add another medication to the chemical cocktail already swimming through his veins, but if the mania didn't subside, he'd need either tranquilizers or sleeping pills. "Doesn't animal control come through here? I don't mean the patients—though many of them would qualify as feral—but the wildlife on the grounds is completely unchecked. Someone with ligyrophobia would have gone into cardiac arrest if they were in here last night, Joan, between that dog and all the birds flying into the windows." _Windows._ "They didn't even leave when Linda tapped on the glass."

Because there hadn't been any birds. Linda had also mentioned that in the night log. Joan had thought that the hallucinations ended when Jonathan stopped shrieking about imaginary beings. Had he been suffering torments from his own mind this entire time, on top of everything else? She tried not to become emotionally involved in her patients' illnesses, no matter how close they'd become in their sessions—or how well they'd known each other before the commitment—but her eyes still stung with tears she refused to let fully form. "At least they didn't get inside." She paused. Maybe they had. "Right?"

Jonathan scoffed, and despite how much he'd changed since losing his license, that sound still held all the condescension it had when he was dispensing orders or advice. "Does the glass look broken to you, Joan?" There was another pause in which his smirk faded and he glanced at the windows, as if to reaffirm that they were still intact.

"No." She hoped that he could see that for himself. "They don't. How was your morning?"

"Teresa's sick, but she won't admit it." He said it while facing the nurse, and his voice carried. Teresa's face went red—it _had_ been unusually pale before that—but she didn't look up from the paperwork she was organizing at the desk. "I told her that she ought to go home and rest before it developed into something worse." _Something worse. _Jonathan nodded faintly—was he reaffirming that he'd spoken?—and looked away from Teresa, pulling at his bandages with his head lowered. "She didn't take my advice. No one takes my advice anymore."

Joan had been raising her hand to guide his arm away from his injuries. She froze mid-movement, his words stinging every bit as badly as the tears she'd refused to let out. He'd reacted to the loss of his position—and his respect—before, but the reactions had always been hostile. Jonathan had shown disgust with the hospital staff for failing to recognize the genius of his experiments, and outrage over their gall in imprisoning him here and treating him as though he were sick in the head. But he'd never outwardly expressed the fear or sadness the loss of power must have caused, though she could see it sometimes in his eyes and the way he carried himself. To see that sorrow, so poignant though expressed so simply, was the final straw. Her own reservations were forgotten, overcome by the rush of sympathy that motivated her to act as she'd wanted to since Jonathan was first returned to the hospital, though the remnants of their professional relationship and her years of psychiatric training warned her not to do it.

She half-stood, leaning toward the cot in the process, and hugged him.

"Joan?" He went rigid, hands latched to her arms, though he didn't struggle to get away. Not yet. Hapnophobia was the fear of being touched. She didn't know why she remembered that, only hoped that he didn't have it. "What are you doing?"

"I'm giving you a hug." His hair smelled faintly of disinfectant, as did everything else in the infirmary.

"Oh." He shifted in a way that was just this side of squirming. "Could you…not do that?"

"All right." She relaxed her grip, and he removed his hands from her arms as she sat back down. Unprofessional, entirely the wrong way to handle an assault victim, and possibly damaging to their relationship beyond repair, but Joan had no regrets and she knew that, given the chance, she'd hug him again.

* * *

"He can't go to jail." How Karen thought carrying on this conversation was helpful, Lucy had no idea, but it was all she could do to keep from slamming her hands over her ears and screaming at the both of them to shut up. "I mean, they decided he wouldn't go to jail for poisoning his patients, didn't he?"

"Right." Victoria was trying to be reassuring. They both were. They must have noticed the dark circles under Lucy's eyes, and the way she couldn't sit still every time she arrived in the rec room to find that Dr. Crane was missing. But talking about it didn't help. It only highlighted his absence, and made the churning in her stomach even rougher. "I mean, if the papers are right, he planned this, but that doesn't mean he's _sane._ The poison was premeditated too, and they decided he wasn't responsible for that."

Lucy hadn't seen any police cars today, and she'd been staring out every available window since she got up. Her friends were probably right. If Dr. Crane counted as insane during his first arrest, that would carry over into the second. It _had_ to. But that wasn't the problem. At least, not all of it.

In jail or in the infirmary, Dr. Crane still wasn't _here._ The last time he'd disappeared for days at a time, he'd been horribly injured. Lucy didn't know what had happened this time. Lotter was—had been—huge. Even drugged, if the stories about the cigarettes were true—Lucy supposed they were, if greatly exaggerated for the press, but she didn't want to think about it—he could have fought back. Was Dr. Crane injured again? Stuck there in terrible pain without anyone to talk to?

And if the injuries weren't physical…she didn't know what had happened in that broom closet. Nobody did, beyond that it was bloody and it had led to a heart attack. What had been said, or done—she tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry and it was all she could do not to gag. Dr. Crane was only human. She didn't want to think about what this could have done to his mind.

"—argue that it's a separate case, they could still claim post traumatic stress disorder," Victoria went on. "I mean, it's not like—"

Lucy opted to look around the room for a distraction instead of throwing her hands over her ears like a child. Orderlies in the corner. Elizabeth working in the nurses' station. The rest of the room was full of patients wandering aimlessly, glued to the television, or having their own conversation, whether with each other or with themselves. She couldn't talk to any of them. The thought of interrupting a conversation—particularly between people she didn't know—made her feel even sicker.

Thomas Schiff was sitting in front of a jigsaw puzzle, though he made no effort to assemble it. He hadn't talked to anyone since Dr. Crane had stopped coming in.

Lucy took a deep breath and turned back to her friends.

"Well, I know they weren't married," Karen said, wrinkling her nose. She'd started taking prenatal vitamins; not because she was pregnant, but because they were supposed to increase the thickness of her hair. It hadn't taken effect so far. "But isn't there something like battered wife syndrome, but not for couples? I thought there was a case where—"

She turned back to Thomas Schiff. He was still sitting alone, staring at the pieces as if he was trying to translate the Rosetta Stone. He had competed with her for Dr. Crane's attention and often monopolized it. He'd had conversations and even physical contact with her doctor while she'd had a few awkward words and stilted movements when she touched his shoulder. She didn't like the schizophrenic. But she couldn't help but pity him.

What was it Dr. Crane used to say about stepping out of her comfort zone?

Victoria said something to her, but Lucy ignored it as she stood, trying to keep her legs from shaking. There was a chair on the other side of Thomas Schiff's table and she started for it, even though it seemed miles away. Crossing a room to talk with a madman. It wasn't an impressive feat by any means, but she told herself Dr. Crane would approve.

She sat down as Thomas Schiff looked up. Lucy forced a smile onto her face and hoped it looked genuine. "Hi. Can I help?"

He stared and, after a pause so long that she nearly fainted, nodded, pushing half of the stack of unassembled pieces toward her. "Here." Her stomach ached a little less.

* * *

The Joker had decided that Ruth would have to suffer.

Not _majorly_. She was, after all, one of the only decent conversationalists in Arkham, with the others being Jonathan, Linda, and Teresa. But he rarely got to see the nurses, and his access to the Scarecrow was surely revoked after this whole "killing Lotter" thing. He still needed to get Jonny cake in return for that. Could scarecrows digest cake? Leaving it sit in their insides might cause them to rot. Well, he'd get him some sort of gift. No, if he killed Ruthie, things would become hopelessly boring. But a broken arm or two wouldn't kill her.

Though it might just might make her quit as his psychiatrist. Ruth could be touchy that way. Maybe just a bruised rib. He had to do something, or it would send the message that Drugs Are Good, and that was unacceptable.

He couldn't do anything at the moment—the orderlies' hold on him had grown tighter than a clingy girlfriend's ever since they'd stopped with the straitjacket—but he'd have his chance outside. Ruthie let her guard down while he was around Gilda, apparently assuming that, like a prepubescent girl, he was incapable of doing anything but giggling and melting when he was faced with puppies. She sat beside him, and it wouldn't be hard to move from petting to jamming her fingers. That should teach her about getting too close to wild dogs, and it wasn't extreme enough to make her storm off forever. It would be a good lesson. Ruth ought to appreciate it.

"Are you still tired?"

"Not as much." The signs by the doctor's doors were still wavering and illegible unless he stopped and squinted, but he'd stopped nodding off whenever he sat still too long. Which would have been a good sign, except that it meant he was adjusting to the drugs, which was the exact opposite of what was good.

"Have you noticed any changes to your temperament?" Usually, by this time in their walk, Ruthie already had a cigarette in hand. She was more relaxed now. That was no fun at all. "Feeling any less tense?"

The Joker tried to shrug, only to have a sudden and sharp reminder that his arms were tightly held to his sides. At least the pain added variety. He _had _slept soundly through the night again, but that was indicative of anything, beyond that Zachary was still shirking in his "wake the clown" duties. And also that Hadley had most likely not made another visit. He didn't have any new bruises, anyway. _It's all fun and games until somebody pisses themselves._

Ruth opened the door. The Joker narrowed his eyes as he was hauled outside, scanning the yard for signs of movement. Gilda wasn't there yet. The orderlies released his arms as the door clicked shut behind him. The Joker cracked his neck, shoving his shoulders back to work out the kinks the restraint had caused, then took a few steps into the yard and let himself fall down, rolling around in the grass.

"Joker." She was smoking now. "We've talked about this."

"It's fine, Ruthie. I'm, uh, immune to Lyme disease."

"Sit up."

"The eye traces _move_ment better than stuff standing still, ya know." Speaking of eyes, his hair had fallen in his. Split ends. It was to be expected. "Dogs have enough vision issues what with the lack of ability to see colors and all. This is for Gilda's benefit."

She knelt beside him. No, kicking her leg would be too obvious. "You're getting your uniform stained."

"Oh. What a tragedy."

"Come on, Joker." He stopped long enough to register that she was holding a hand out in front of him. _Wow. _He bit his lip to restrain his giggles. Talk about walking into the dragon's mouth. "Sit up."

Struggling to conceal a smirk, he scanned the yard in an attempt to look nonchalant as he raised his arm to take hers, slowly sitting up. It wouldn't take more than a jerk of his wrist to dislocate hers, or jam her fingers. The second was probably the better option, but the first would make such an interesting sound when—

The Joker stopped dead, ice forming in the pit of his stomach and spreading through the rest of his body in less than a second.

The eye _did _track movement better than objects at rest, which was why he hadn't noticed at first. He'd assumed Gilda was out of the yard, but she wasn't. She was lying toward the bushes by the parking lot, completely still. No twitch of the ears or tail. No rise or fall of the chest.

"Joker? What's wrong?"

So Hadley had made him pay for it after all.

* * *

AN: Ligyrophobia is the fear of loud sounds.

I don't actually believe that I have any reviewers who'd flame me for this, but given the emotional blow I just dealt at the end of this chapter, I'd like to paraphrase Stephen King in regards to the time he killed off a dog in _The Dead Zone_ for anyone whom I've just really upset:

a) Hadley isn't real.

b) The _dog _isn't real.

c) I have never in my life harmed my own pets, or anyone else's, and

d) (This is the point where I stop paraphrasing Stephen King) I feel terrible enough about it as it is.


	36. Speak Truth

AN: I've never written grieving Joker before, so I hope it works.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear."

—Henry David Thoreau

_No._

"Joker?" Ruth's hand was tugging on his, trying to pull free, and some far-off part of his mind recognized that his grip had tightened, that it had to be hurting her, and that this was what he'd set out to accomplish when he'd gotten up this morning, but that part was all but dissociated from the majority—which was only capable now of repeating _no no no no NO_—and he couldn't care if he was hurting her or grinding her bones into dust or digging his nails into her skin, because Gilda was lying there and Gilda wasn't moving and she _had _to be all right, he couldn't have made her a part of this, she had nothing to do with this, she was a _dog _and she wasn't involved and it was _wrong._

He couldn't remember ever caring about wrong before.

"Joker, you're _hurting _me. What's—"

In his peripheral vision—how he still had that, he didn't know, because the only thing he was capable of really seeing at the moment was Gilda lying in the grass and not moving and no this couldn't be happening she had to be okay—the orderlies closed in and the Joker shoved himself forward, skin burning through the knees of his pants from the friction with ground before he managed to get up, to sprint, and his hand was still in Ruth's, dragging her for a few steps until the weight of her body caught up and slowed him and he let her go because she didn't matter, the only thing that matters was getting to Gilda because she _had _to be all right, and he _had _to see her, had to prove that his fears were unjustified.

Ruth was shouting something when he reached the bushes, knees and palms stinging from impact when he pitched himself onto the ground, and the orderlies had to be closing in behind him, but it didn't matter because Gilda was right there and if he could just pet her, touch her, _talk _to her, even, she would sit back up and lick his hand and everything would be fine, but the tongue hanging out of her mouth was purple and the fur around her neck half-gone, the skin beneath it bruised and swollen, and she wasn't moving, not when he said her name, not when he petted her, and not when he took her into his arms and held her tight, so tight that the orderlies couldn't pry his arms from her when they caught up.

Ruth was beside him, then—"What were y—oh Christ—Joker—oh my _God_, I—I'm"—and the things she said didn't matter because Gilda wasn't breathing, and he wasn't either, chest heaving in gasping breaths that never reached his lungs, eyes watering though the tears never spilled over. He never cried, wasn't human enough for it, not anymore, but he was human enough to feel this, and it felt like his scars had been torn open all over again.

He was shaking, and the orderlies were pulling his arms back, successfully this time, pulling them apart, and he tried to scream, kick, lash out and make them leave the two of them alone, but his vocal cords were as unresponsive as his lungs, and the strength he'd had when he squeezed Ruth's hand was gone, and Gilda was lying in the grass without him, and they were dragging him back toward the madhouse, with Ruth at his side—"I'll get the security footage, Joker, I'll find out what happened"—and he was screaming at them to _let go, I have to go back, she doesn't like to be left alone_ but the screaming never left his head and they were moving down hall after hall and he didn't even know where they were anymore, until Ruth pushed the infirmary doors open and he was sitting on a cot and Jonathan Crane was looking at him over the top of his book and Teresa was beside her and she was talking to Ruth, but the words were too fast and too meaningless to be followed, only heard. "I need you to watch him, it's only for a minute, and the orderlies will—"

"What happened?"

"I have to see Dr. Arkham. Someone—one of the other patients must have seen his dog and—and they strangled it—"

"Oh my God—"

"And it should have been reported, but it wasn't or I'd have known, so I need you to help him relax while—"

"He did it."

They both stopped to stare at him as if they'd listen, as if anything would be done and as if it would be any more than a slap on the wrist if it was handled. "He did it."

"Joker, what—"

She kept talking. He didn't respond. He didn't listen. There wasn't any point. Gilda was dead and there was nothing Ruth could do to change it. Ruth was leaning over him, trying to coax words from him—she was cradling the hand he'd held onto against her chest—and then she was gone, patting him on the shoulder before she left as if that would fix anything, and there was only Teresa, standing in front of him, hands wringing and lips moving though she never actually said anything. He didn't know where the orderlies were standing; he didn't turn his head to look. Teresa was gone suddenly, and back just as quickly, purse in hand, and from the purse she extracted a camera. She was lifting his shirt, then, snapping pictures, and if the orderlies questioned it, he couldn't hear them over the clicking of the camera. She moved to his back as he closed his eyes, bracing himself for tears to slide out, though none came. He should be thinking of revenge. He should be using Teresa as a hostage to take the orderlies' weapons and car keys and be halfway to Hadley's house by now, shattering the windshield for makeshift knives.

But he couldn't move. He couldn't even speak, and he was stuck there, broken, letting Teresa shoot pictures for purposes unknown as Gilda lay in the yard, alone.

* * *

Jeremiah Arkham hadn't had any reports of animal violence.

That didn't mean it hadn't happened. The thought of an orderly, nurse, or even a doctor skipping on incident paperwork by failing to report losing control of a patient for the time it took to smother a dog was something Ruth could visualize all too easily, sickening as that was. The administrator's bewilderment only indicated that if someone had fucked up, it hadn't been him.

She had no way of knowing _who _it had been. The Joker's dog had been strangled in a blind spot between cameras.

The fingers of her right hand were black and blue and swollen. Teresa had given her an ice pack, but she'd spend the day working with her hands—shuffling through files and record logs, dialing the police—and she couldn't afford taking the break that using the ice pack would necessitate. She'd never seen the Joker react that way before. He'd blanked out when she'd mentioned Batman, and shown unease after she'd asked about his scars, but that level of emotional torment—he'd lost the only real friend he'd had in the asylum. She shuddered to think of the damage to his mental state.

She'd called the police in spite of Jeremiah Arkham's protests. Animal cruelty wasn't something she'd overlook in any circumstance, and besides, there was a chance that the dog had managed to scratch the assailant, or bite. She didn't know if any DNA could be salvaged from the corpse, or how they'd find a match, short of taking samples from every Arkham patient and employee, but if there was any chance of nailing the bastard behind this, she'd take it, public relations be damned.

This wasn't the work of a patient.

It was an accusation without evidence and Ruth knew it, but that didn't make it any less true. Before she'd taken the Joker outside, there had been two high security inmates brought out individually and one large group of low security patients. In a group, things could slip by unnoticed, but she couldn't wrap her head around the thought of someone strangling a dog in plain sight—it couldn't have been a quick process—without anyone else taking notice. And a high security patient would be hauled off the dog by orderlies before things went that far. She'd hunted down the doctors and the patients herself, and they all denied involvement. True, that wasn't proof of anything, but her gut told her that the time the murder must have taken and the fact that it happened out of sight of the cameras had to indicate an employee. Occam's razor: it was the simplest solution.

_He did it._

The Joker's words had been running through her mind all day, along with the visual of his scratched arms and scraped face, like a surreal and minimalistic music video. Jonathan Crane had been targeted by the orderlies, and she imagined that they'd excused their behavior by reminding themselves of the poison he'd put in the water supply. The Joker had tried to _blow up _all the residents of Gotham fleeing from his sick games. How could she have been so stupid as to not realize that he was the most likely target in the hospital for abuse? _How could anyone be _stupid _enough to challenge him?_

Ruth flipped a sheet in her notes, trying to tell herself that her hand didn't flare with pain every time she moved it, and that it wasn't long past time for her to go home for the night. _He __did it._ The Joker had been unresponsive when she'd tried to talk to him when she returned to the infirmary, shivering and almost hyperventilating and, for the first time since she'd taken on his case, entirely sympathetic. He wouldn't speak—possibly _couldn't _speak—not in the infirmary and not when they moved him back to his cell, but he knew what orderly—if it was an orderly, and not another employee or patient—had it out for him. There had to be _some _indication, be it in his notebook or her session notes. There had to be.

But so far, her search had been fruitless.

"Ruth?"

Jeremiah Arkham stood in the doorway. _For fuck's sake. _It was only the ache in her hand that prevented her from slamming her fists on the desk and shouting at him to get out. Her sense of self-preservation had left for the evening hours ago. "Look, if you're here to tell me that I've put my job on the line for bringing the cops here again, then I don't care, so why don't you just—"

"No, it's not like that." He stepped inside, looking more sheepish and awkward than offended, and Ruth didn't have the energy to feel relieved. "I wanted to apologize for this afternoon. What happened to that dog—you were right to report it. I shouldn't have snapped at you."

Translation: he'd realized that animal cruelty wasn't as juicy a news story as premeditated murder, so he was willing to let it slide. All right, so she was being needlessly cynical. Dr. Arkham had a conscience, even if he buried it under his obsessive need for good public relations and his more sympathetic need for funding. Still, Ruth was cold enough to believe that if Wayne Enterprises hadn't just granted them thousands to improve living conditions and weed out unsanitary personnel, Arkham would still be giving her the cold shoulder. "Don't worry about it."

He nodded, glancing at the paperwork spread over her desk. "How's he doing?"

"Not speaking or eating."

Another nod. Arkham wore the look of a man who'd realized that for all formal purposes the conversation was over, but still felt the need to carry on out of an attempt to establish companionship. His eyes fell to the notebook. "That's his writing?"

"Yes."

A pause. Ruth thought he might be leaving, but of course he had to speak again. "Morse?"

"What?" She was too tired for proper etiquette.

"Morse code." He tapped the pattern of rectangles and circles the Joker used to indicate paragraph breaks. "I learned it in the Boy Scouts. Well, it wasn't required knowledge, but my friends and I used it to pass notes—"

He was a Boy Scout. Why was she not surprised? "I don't think the Joker knows Morse code."

"No, that's definitely it." Arkham leaned forward, running a finger beneath the line as though that would make it legible. "It's a system of dots and dashes—let me see if I still remember anything…I think that's an H—"

Dots and dashes. _Oh, Jesus Christ. _Ruth grabbed the Joker's file and shoved the pages she didn't need out of the way, ignoring the flare of pain through her hand. The lights had gone on upstairs, and she was too busy praying that she'd remembered correctly, and that she had a chance at understanding, to care that it was _Jeremiah Arkham _who'd flipped the switch. The answer sheet for the IQ test lay before her, the page covered in the same rectangles and circles as the notebook. She took the pages in the hand that didn't feel as though she'd dipped it in kerosene, and held them out to the administrator. "Translate this."

* * *

She shouldn't be here.

Teresa's shift had ended three hours ago. She'd clocked out and left, drove straight to the nearest supermarket with a one-hour photo, and handed over the memory card from her camera. She didn't what to think of what the employees must have thought of the pictures it contained, let alone the fact that she'd asked for double copies. She'd spent that hour in the supermarket's deli, staring at the sandwich she'd ordered and trying to work up the appetite to eat it. She'd wanted to go home, to shower or at least change out of her scrubs, but she hadn't let herself leave. She'd have lost the nerve if she left, and she knew it.

She had gone home after she'd gotten the developed photos, but only to sort out the photos that hadn't fit—patient abuse and her father's birthday party didn't exactly mesh together—and to leave one copy of the pictures at her house. It wasn't like she was expecting Dr. Arkham to grab them from her and destroy them. Teresa didn't know what she was expecting. Only that this had gone too far.

Seeing the Joker—the _Joker_—sitting on that cot and struggling not to cry was the final straw. Monster and murder or not, no one deserved that, just as no innocent animal deserved to die for the sake of hurting a mental patient. It was heartbreaking and appropriately, it was her breaking point, and it had gnawed at her even after the Joker was taken out of the infirmary. She couldn't work at a place where the patients were tormented this way. And, unless the conversation she was about to have promised changes, she'd walk away. Take up fast food or move back in with her parents, if she had to.

God, she said it as if her legs weren't about to give out from under her.

_I should leave. _Go home, take a bath, forget it. Better than tracking down her boss and telling him that either he'd be shaking up the system or she'd go to the papers. It wouldn't work. It might make things worse; show the management the flaws in their system and, by extension, make it easier for them to sweep things under the rug. She could be assaulted to be kept silent. She could lose her job—

_It's not worth keeping. _Teresa tried to tell herself she was confident, brave. It didn't work, but she clung to the mantra regardless. _I can't do this. I can't live with myself if I know I'm letting this go on._ No matter what the cost, she had to try. She had to pretend she was strong.

The receptionist had said that Dr. Arkham was in Dr. Adams's office. In a way, that made things easier—she couldn't imagine that the doctors _liked _people beating their patients—but then again, Dr. Adams was cold and stern and, in Teresa's current state of panic, terrifying. _She'll be on my side. She has to be._

She was in front of the office now. The door was open. Teresa tried not to vomit on her shoes, listening for conversation. There were murmurs from inside. Well, she should wait until a pause in—_no. _If she stopped here, she'd never have the courage to try. Teresa straightened, swallowed hard, and stepped inside.

"Dr. Arkham? I need to talk to you."

* * *

One hundred seventy-nine.

Ruth had pulled up a Internet search on Morse code to verify Arkham's translations. She'd checked the results twice, and both times, it had been the same. One hundred seventy-nine. It wasn't a perfect score—of course, outside of fiction, the odds of anyone achieving a perfect score was laughably ridiculous—but for a test normed at one hundred, it was high enough to make her numb. One hundred sixty-five was four standard deviations from the norm. She didn't know what one hundred and seventy-nine was, not off hand, but considering that one hundred sixty-five equated to about one person that intelligent out of _thirty thousand_, the Joker's score was almost unheard of.

A genius. A manipulative genius. As if he wasn't horrifying enough before.

"I could be wrong—"

"You could." They were speaking in hushed tones, she realized, as if the Joker's ears were as sharp as his mind. "But I doubt that every website the search pulled up is."

"Dr. Arkham?" Teresa stepped through the floor, pale as the wall of the hall behind her. She held something clutched to her chest. "I need to talk to you."

"Teresa? Arkham glanced between them, as though Ruth had any clue as to why the nurse was here. "Isn't your shift over?"

"Look, I—I took these when the Joker was in the infirmary." She reached out with a shaking hand, extending what Ruth took to be a small stack of papers before Arkham took them and she realized they were photographs. "Look at them. Those can't be self-inflicted."

Ruth watched over Arkham's shoulder as he flipped through the stack. Bruises. Enormous bruises, to the point that more of his flesh was purple than peach. And stopping just at the point where his sleeves and shirt would end. It felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her.

So it had been an orderly. _How could I have missed this?_ How long had her patient been suffering while she sat by, oblivious?

"The orderlies—they're beating him like they beat Jonathan Crane, don't you see?" Teresa. How long had Teresa known, and sat in silence? Ruth wanted to hate her. She was too stunned to feel much of anything, yet.

Arkham turned to Ruth and, grant from Wayne Enterprises or not, the color drained from his face. "Ruth?"

"He—he never mentioned it. But today, after he saw the dog, he indicated that someone had done it on purpose. To hurt him." _Oh, Christ. _That intellect, mixed with that emotional turmoil and his mental instability—_shit._

Ruth ran out the door, and Arkham, presumably realizing at the same time she had that genius plus rage equaled bloody massacre, followed straight on her heels, with Teresa shortly behind.

_He can't have gotten out—he can't open the doors from the inside—he has to be there. He has to be._

But, as she found when she swiped the key to his cell and threw the door open, he wasn't.


	37. We've Only Just Begun

AN: I promise that my week's disappearance wasn't some cheap attempt on my part to heighten tension; I spent all weekend at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, and you can read about my exploits there here: lauralot. livejournal. com/ 6395. html I even got to meet Batman's voice actor. It was awesome. Anyway, before that, I was caught up with school and other such distractions, and I was also at a bit of a loss for where I wanted this chapter to go. To be honest, I still am, but I'm going to start writing anyway and hope that something awesome comes out.

**Note: This chapter begins place a few hours before the end of the last chapter, when Ruth and the others discovered that the Joker was missing.**

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"And when the evening comes we smile; so much of life ahead

We'll find a place where there's room to grow, and yes! We've just begun."

—"We've Only Just Begun," The Carpenters

The Joker's dog was missing.

_Don't say that. You don't know that._ And no, Zachary didn't know it. Not for sure. Of all the things he did know—that he had to feed the Joker's dog nightly or risk punishment that would either leave him dead or wishing that he'd been killed, that the Joker had said he could break out any time he wanted and Zachary wasn't about to test him, that he'd already pissed the clown off by going AWOL for three days—he had no way of knowing that the dog was missing. Yes, _sometimes_—maybe even most times, these days—it ran up while he was coming in to work the evening shift, but he didn't feed it until his shift ended, so he had no real reason to worry. He was being paranoid. That was all.

Then again, as he'd been told in training after Crane had poisoned the asylum, paranoia in Arkham could be what kept you alive.

_Stop it. _He had enough on his plate without psyching himself out over this. All the cleaning that needed to be done back at the house for the barbeque tomorrow night, Cheryl nagging him to transfer even though she knew that no one was hiring, the ear tubes he'd have to pay for if Madison got one more infection, and all the other shit he found himself wading through. He'd go out at midnight and the damn dog would be there just like always, and life would go on as before. So what if he hadn't seen the dog last night?

Last night. With Hadley.

_Don't. _The dog was fine. It had to be. So Hadley had roughed it up a little, and he wasn't even sure of that. It was twisted, but life went on. The dog wasn't the issue. The issue was facing the Joker after he'd disappeared for three days. There was no way to avoid it. Not when it was his job to patrol the high security ward. Though the cameras in this hallway always just happened to be malfunctioning, so—

"Happy Independence Day, Zachary."

He froze. Zachary could see the clown leaning against the tiny window of the cell from the inside, hair hanging in his face. If he really could break out whenever he wanted, then he hadn't. Yet. But he had seen Zachary, and there was no use pretending that he wasn't there. That would only piss the Joker off, and that was the last thing he wanted. "That's not until tomorrow," he said, because he had to say _something._

"You haven't come to see me." There was something wrong with the Joker's voice. He wasn't drawing out his words now, or smacking his lips. It would have been normal on anyone else, but on the Joker, it made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

"You were sleeping." He was, on the first two nights. Zachary had tried to rouse him, even gone inside and tapped his shoulder on the second night. The fact that his efforts weren't long-lived didn't mean he hadn't tried. Zachary didn't know if he'd been sleeping the third night. Hadley had intercepted him before he got there.

"You didn't wake me up." The Joker didn't make it an accusation, only a statement, and the statement made Zachary's blood run cold. Shouting would have been less frightening than this. "That hurts, Zachary. I thought we were closer than that."

He couldn't speak. His mind ran through excuses, each less plausible than the last, but his throat wouldn't move to form the sounds.

"Know what you should do to make it up to me?"

Any defense he might have given disappeared from his brain, replaced by memories shared with his wife and daughter intermittent with images of how broken and mutilated his body would be once the Joker was through. He was going to die. He was going to die and he'd never see his daughter grow—she wouldn't even _remember _him, not when she grew up—and his wife wouldn't be able to support her without him, and he'd never have a beer with his friends or a walk with his family or a phone call with his parents ever again. "Please—"

"You need to let me out of the cell."

There was a thread of hope, suddenly, and he grabbed hold of it like a lifeline. The Joker could get out of his cell at any time—if he was _let _out. And Zachary, for all the stupid choices he'd made in getting involved with the clown, wasn't suicidal. "N-no."

"_Ex_cuse me?" There was a flicker of his bizarre pronunciation. Even more bizarrely, it was almost comforting. At the very least, Zachary was back on solid ground.

"I'm not letting you out. I—I'll lose my job." _And my life._

"Zachary." The Joker turned his head to stare out the window. His eyes bored through the glass, cloudy and double-paned though it was. "I don't thin_k_ you get it. I'm asking _nicely _now, but one way or another? I'm getting _out._"

"Then do it yourself." _Shit._ He'd done it. He'd challenged the Joker. Door or not, needing to be let out or not, he'd pay for that in blood if the clown got the chance. It wasn't safe in this ward now. Fuck his paycheck, he'd report to the main desk sick and see about a transfer tomorrow—

"So, uh…how's Madison?"

"_What_?" He'd been turning to go, to run. To get out of the high security ward and never look back. Now, his legs might as well have sprouted roots into the floor tiles. He couldn't move, couldn't even try to.

"Ma_di_son." The Joker made it sound defiled. "Your little girl? Just turned three, didn't she?"

"I—that—" And he thought he'd felt fear when _he _was the one being threatened. He tried to swallow, but there was no liquid in his mouth and it ground his throat raw. "I don't h-have a daughter."

"Well, that's a nasty ac_cus_ation to make about your wife." The Joker's eyes sparkled, but there was no good humor in them. Just a hunger, bloodthirsty but, even worse, cunning. "What, your baby girl's blonde, so her momma's cheating? Give it a few years; I'm sure it'll, uh, turn that same mousy brown shade _you're _sporting. I mean, first you throw her a party with ice cream cake and a piñata, and then you try and call her ille_git_imate? I'm sensing some commitment issues, friendo."

Madison. The Joker knew what sort of party Zachary had thrown _his daughter._ He couldn't know that. He _couldn't_; there was no way—unless he'd heard it from someone else. Anyone else. Zachary had told other orderlies about his family, mentioned them to nurses. The Joker could have heard it from one of them. He _must _have. "You don't know anything about my daughter."

"I know that you gave her a name meaning "_son _of Maude."" The Joker smiled for the first time. It wasn't a happy smile; it was only there to show his teeth. "I take it ety_mol_ogy isn't your forte. I know that you got her first tricycle for her third birthday, and that it's purple with silver streamers. _And _I know that she's got light blonde hair about, oh, _this _long."

There was a drawer built into the door of every cell, to transport medications or trays of food or anything else that a patient unable to leave the room might need. The Joker shoved on it from the inside, pushing it out to reveal what Zachary took to be an empty drawer at first. Until he got closer, and saw the hairs on the inside. There weren't many, but they were long, much longer than the Joker's. And a much paler blond.

Just like Madison's.

Zachary raised his head. The Joker met his eyes.

"Open the door."

He did, and the clown pulled him inside.

* * *

Zachary Stewart would not be discovered until 3:52 AM on July fourth, in the solitary confinement room of the high security ward, dressed in the Joker's asylum uniform. Upon his discovery, he would be hospitalized for a fractured skull and jaw bone, as well as numerous abrasions and contusions over his entire body.

The body of security officer Jackson Kendall would be discovered in the security room at 11:16 PM July third, by Doctors Jeremiah Arkham and Ruth Adams, with his arms severely lacerated and his carotid artery cut. Beside him, the doctors would discover security officer Richard Moss, whose jugular had come within two centimeters of being sliced and whose femoral artery had been severed. Moss had fashioned a makeshift tourniquet on his leg with his belt, and would spend an hour in the ICU in critical condition before expiring. The security room's window had been shattered, and glass slivers would be found on the floor, but not enough to account for the entire window. The security cameras had been deactivated, and upon review of the tapes, investigators would find footage of a long-haired orderly moving down the halls, careful to keep his face turned away from the cameras, stopping once in the medical supply closet before continuing on toward the security room. Shortly thereafter, the cameras went black.

The remaining glass shards, as well as the missing medical supplies, would be discovered in the basement of Arkham Asylum, alongside the body of orderly James Hadley, at 3:16 PM on July fourth.

* * *

Gray.

All that he could see was gray, and the gray was moving as he breathed.

Hadley blinked. His head was throbbing with every breath, aching in time with the movement of wall of gray, and his vision slid in and out of focus. He felt hung over, but if this was the effect of drinking, he'd never been this drunk in his life.

Dust. His eyes focused long enough to register that. He was staring at a pile of dust. Beneath the pulsing in his head, there was cement, cold and rough, under his body. He was lying on his side.

_The hell? _He'd been in the hall, hadn't he? To start his shift, to see the clown, rubbing his face in the grave he'd dug for himself…the walls of the wards weren't bare concrete. What _was _this? Hadley tried to raise himself up on his elbows, crashing back down as his head pounded with renewed fury. "_Fuck_."

"Oh. So you can talk. Thought I might've broken your jaw."

The voice was familiar, but his head was spinning and he couldn't place it. His eyes scanned the room, but between the dim lighting and the way his vision wouldn't stay steady, he couldn't see anyone. Hadley closed his eyes, waited, opened them again. The room was clearer now, and empty.

"I broke Zachary's jaw, ya know."

The basement. He recognized the staircase and the exposed piping on the floor. This was where Crane had dumped his shit into the water system. They'd boarded up the doors after the cops had searched the place, removed the basement from the elevator to keep any other sick fucks from using it to drug the city. But it was still accessible through a staircase in one of the janitor's closets, and someone must have dragged him down those stairs. Headfirst, from the feel of it.

"He was _quite _the Chatty Cathy before I got down to _biz_-ness. Most of it was _so _boring—all don't kill me or think of my family or stay away from my _little girl_, but there were parts—little, in between parts—that were absolutely en_thrall_ing."

Hadley staggered tohis knees, searching for the source of the voice. It was coming from behind him, by the sound, but the trauma to his head must have fucked with his hearing, because behind him there was nothing but a wall.

"He had this _great _little story, for instance, about last night. Seems he was just gonna go home for the evening when some _brazen_, uh, upstart cornered him in the hall and threatened to beat 'im senseless if he didn't 'fess up to what he'd been doing for his clown friend. Fancy that, huh?"

_The Joker._ Hadley bolted to his feet and regretted it immediately when the world swam before him, then faded completely in a flood of blinding pain. The Joker was one thing when Hadley was in his cell without a concussion—the time he'd caught him off guard being the exception that proved the rule—but here, injured and out of his element—_Shit. _His vision cleared again, and he scanned the space before him, looking for cover. The door wasn't far.

"Actually, it wasn't a very nice story at all." The Joker's voice was flat now, and right behind him. It didn't make sense—it wasn't _possible_—but Hadley had one shot at escape and now wasn't the time to get technical. He ran, adrenaline overcoming the pain in his head. The door was five steps now, two steps, open—

And a pair of hands shot out from the other side, slamming him back against the railing.

The world disappeared again. When it came back, there was a face over his. He didn't recognize it at first, not because it wasn't familiar—how could anyone forget those scars?—but because he'd never seen it look that way. The Joker was always wearing a shit-eating grin, and twisting his face when he wasn't. Here, his expression was smooth apart from downward-slanting eyebrows, and his mouth was set in a line.

It occurred to Hadley, as his recognition dawned, that the Joker could _throw his voice._

Fuck.

"You killed her, you sick _bastard._"

A dog. Unbefuckinglievable. The sick fuck had killed people, had tried to murder _him_, and he cared so much about some mutt? It'd be pathetic if it wasn't his life on the line. "You tried to—"

The Joker's fist slammed into his chin, jerking his head sideways. The pain was bad enough to make his eyes ring, stars exploding across his eyes. "You wouldn't _dare_ try to justify yourself if you knew what I'd lost."

Hadley spat blood; one of his teeth had been knocked loose. He attempted to sit up, and the Joker didn't move in retaliation. Now if he could just catch him off guard, get in a few well-placed kicks. The Joker was strong, he'd given him that, but he was only human, and any human would go down with the right force. "I don't care what you've lost."

"You wouldn't." And then the clown's hands were on his throat, squeezing the life from him. His head was jostled by the movements, sending white hot bursts of agony throughout his body. He tried to claw at the hands around his throat, kick out against the body holding him down, but his lungs were burning for air and his strength was fading.

And then the Joker's hands were gone, leaving him gasping for air.

"Know how long it takes die of strangulation? A few minutes, with the right _press_ure. Know how long I'm gonna take to do you, honeybunch?" He leaned down, whispered in Hadley's ear. "A few _hours_."

He lashed out in desperation, arm slamming against the Joker's throat. The Joker fell back as Hadley scrambled forward, trying to regain his footing, but the Joker's foot caught his ankle and sent him crashing back down. The Joker twisted, and there was a sharp pain, then a burning in Hadley's hand. He looked down to find a shard of glass embedded in the back of his hand, and from the feel of it, it went straight through to the other side.

"You know, I _really _don't like you," said the Joker, and then his foot was in Hadley's ribs.

The minutes after were a blur, full of kicking and crunching and screams that started in his lungs and died in his throat. He was on fire now, not just his hand but his whole body, and although he'd rather die than give the Joker the satisfaction of screaming, his head was spinning and his nerves ablaze, and it was only the lack of breath from the kicks to his stomach that kept him from shrieking out loud. The world began to tilt and he vomited, vaguely aware that the Joker was pulling him up so he wouldn't drown in his own puke.

"I've got this great _trick_," said the Joker, as he hauled Hadley's head back, "that I do with a pencil, but you wanna know what? It works with glass too!"

Something was shoved against his eye, and there was a moment of resistance and indescribable pain before it forced its way inside, leaking fluids from the socket as half of Hadley's world went permanently dark.

* * *

The fingers of Hadley's right hand had been sawed off, as the officers who would discover the body the following afternoon noted. There was a tourniquet tied at one end around his wrist, to limit the blood flow to his hands, and tied at the other end to the railing, to keep his hand above his heart. The autopsy would reveal microscopic shards of glass in wounds, and the severed fingers collected at the scene would reveal that the thumb and index finger were removed one joint at a time. The top knuckle of the middle finger on the left hand had also been removed, but the assailant had either lost interest or become annoyed with how quickly the glass shards dulled, because the rest of the fingers were intact.

There was a bloodstained intubation tube near the body on the floor, and the autopsy would also reveal scraping inside Hadley's throat, indicating that the assailant placed it inside his victim to keep him from asphyxiating on vomit, or—judging from the depth of the cuts on Hadley's torso—to keep him from suffocating on his blood.

The orderly's body was covering in contusions and lacerations, and on the back of his left thigh, a large and jagged patch of skin had been removed, along with the musculature beneath it, in some points. An analysis of the corpse's stomach contents during the autopsy would reveal that the Joker had forced his victim to consume his own flesh. Apart from the missing eye, fingers, and stretch of skin, the damage done to the body appeared to be limited to deep cuts and beating, until the assailant had slit his throat. The autopsy would note the laceration across the throat to be relatively shallow, indicating that exsanguination may have taken some time to occur, depending on the amount of blood loss from before.

Further examination would reveal that several of the contusions had occurred post-mortem, suggesting that the assailant continued to beat his victim after the time of death.

* * *

"You should sleep, Jonathan."

If Jonathan heard, he gave no indication, flipping a page of his book. Linda tried to remind herself that it was rude to roll her eyes at a mental patient, but the part of her mind that needed to be a bitch in order to make it through the night argued that he wasn't looking anyway, and so she gave into the urge to roll. She couldn't fault Joan for providing him with his books—certainly, it was better than leaving him to sit and hallucinate and whisper about birds—but she didn't want to turn off the lights only to have a lecture about her disrespect for intellectual development, as she'd had before the "birds" had started up the night before.

"Jonathan."

"It's too loud for that," he muttered, pushing his glasses up on the brim of his nose.

So he was hallucinating again. Not surprising. Linda felt a mix of pity and exasperation. "Is it the birds?"

He looked up with wide eyes. "What birds?"

_Great. _"Never mind, I was just—"

The door to the infirmary was pushed in with enough force to bounce it against the opposite wall, and the Joker stepped inside. If not for his scars, Linda wouldn't have recognized him, partly because he was wearing an orderly's uniform, and partly because he was covered in blood. "Joker?"

He gave her a wave, with a smile that might have looked charming, had it come from someone who was familiar with a toothbrush. And who wasn't covered in blood. Linda couldn't tell if it was his own and she was hesitant to find out. "What happened?"

"Not much. _Komdu sæll_, Scarecrow."

Jonathan looked up for the first time since the door had opened. "What?"

"It's Icelandic."

"I see." He returned to his book.

The Joker's smile widened. "I'm breaking out of this place, Jonny."

Linda moved backwards, reaching a hand behind her for the phone on the desk.

"Mmm-hmm."

"Wanna tag along?"

* * *

AN: All right, I know that We've Only Just Begun (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=RvBCl3CBMXA) doesn't exactly have the right mood for this chapter, but I can't hear it without associating it with the film version of _1408_, and there, it was quite creepily used.

No, the Joker didn't break out and go stalk Zachary's family. I assume you all know where he got the hair?

I hope you don't mind that I didn't write out the process of the Joker's bloody revenge. My conscience and my limited ability to write action sequences interfered.

"You wouldn't dare try to justify yourself if you knew what I'd lost" is a line of Harvey's from TDK. If you've ever read _Calvin and Hobbes, _remember the strips when Calvin stole Susie's doll, so she retaliated by stealing Hobbes, and Calvin had a line akin to "This was hilarious until she did the exact same thing to me"? That's about how well I think the Joker would take the torments he inflicts on others turned back at him.


	38. Way Out of Here

AN: As with "Mad World," I know that Jimi Hendrix isn't the writer, Bob Dylan was, and he definitely deserves a mention. As with "Mad World" again, however, the Hendrix version is the one I know and had in mind, hence his name on the quote.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"There must be some kind of way out of here," said the joker to the thief.

"There's too much confusion; I can't get no relief."

—Jimi Hendrix, "All Along the Watchtower"

Jonathan didn't answer right away, eyes scanning back and forth over the page of his book. What little of himself he'd managed to pull together when the Joker had last seen him, sending Lotter into a nervous breakdown with seventies' film quotes, must have slipped out of his reach again. His arms and what the Joker could see of his shoulders were bandaged sporadically and his uniform had been swapped out for some sort of green dress. Apparently, vengeance hadn't provided catharsis.

Hadley's blood was still warm on the Joker. It hadn't been enough. He could have done the same thing and worse a hundred times over, and he got the feeling that he'd still be pissed over what the bastard had done to Gilda. He could relate.

"Where are you going?" He didn't look up from _Ulysses_, which was rude, but considering how doped up the Scarecrow had been when last the Joker had seen him in the infirmary, he decided to be generous and assume that his friend wasn't firing on all cylinders. _Huh._ So he still retained the composure through the murderous rage to cut someone the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, the Joker surprised even himself.

He shrugged. Not that Jonathan was looking up to see it. "Any way the wind blows."

Jonathan did raise his head at that, and glanced out the window. "I don't think the wind's blowing."

A vein in the Joker's eyelid twitched. "It's an expression, Jonny."

"Oh," said Jonathan, returning to his book.

This didn't bode well for the road trip, if he said yes. "Well, are you or aren't—planning on making a call, Linda?"

Linda, who was trying to pretend that she didn't have a phone in the hand behind her back, was shaking. Not like the night he'd checked in, back when she'd been frightened up until they strapped him to the bed—and the way she'd dismissed him afterward still made his blood boil—then, it had only been a slight twitch, more wide eyes and slight stammers than everything else. Now, she looked more like Teresa had on the first morning the Joker had seen her, right after she'd grabbed him and made him spit out the Nair. _Why _that had frightened her, the Joker wasn't sure—it wasn't as if she'd endangered her life, as he enjoyed being manhandled by cute nurses—but that was how Linda looked now, and in her case, the fear was justified.

After all, she still needed to learn her lesson from that first night.

"N-no, no, I wasn't—"

The Joker took a step toward her. Linda stumbled back and nearly toppled over when her legs hit the desk. Jonathan turned another page. "In that case, mind dropping the phone?"

Once, he'd drained a man's entire blood supply, just to see if it was possible. As it turned out, it was, provided that one had a catheter in either the superior or inferior vena cava, and a lot of patience. The Joker had never seen anyone paler before or since that experiment, but Linda came damn close. "You can't break out."

He stopped, stared at his bloodstained uniform. Then glanced at the door he'd shoved through. "Uh, little late for that, Linda."

"Y-you don't have to leave." She was still holding the phone; he could tell from the tension in her arm. The Joker couldn't decide if it would be amusing or infuriating were she to actually try dialing. On the one hand, there was no way she'd get past the nine in 911 before he knocked it out of her hand. But it would still be violating his request, and that was just rude. "You can—"

"You know, there's a _lot _I can put up with." The Joker resumed his walk toward the desk. To her credit, Linda didn't try to run. "I can put up with, uh, nurses disre_spect_ing me as soon as I'm tied up. I can deal with those same nurses making _fun _of the fact that my scars make it hard to chew things."

"No, I didn't—"

One foot in front of the other. She was still holding the phone. How, he wasn't sure, given how hard she was shaking, but she was. That was starting to get annoying. "I can deal with being _drugged_ and studied and locked up away from everybody else like a _leper_. But this morning, Linda, I found out what I _can't _deal with."

"Joker, I'm sorry that your d—"

"They didn't have bacon."

Linda managed to merge relentless horror with bewilderment seamlessly.

"That's the _only _part of Arkham's breakfast that could be considered remotely "good," and they were _out. _And that, sweetheart, that is where I draw the line. Drop the phone."

"Joker—"

He pounced.

She finally let go of the phone. The Joker heard it clatter to the desk, eyes on Linda as she tried to dodge to his side and run, for cover or help or whatever plan she'd managed to devise through her terror, if she was acting on rational thought at all. More than likely, it was fight or flight, and whatever her motivator, one of the best things about being the Greatest Person in the History of Humanity was his ability to read body language in a millisecond, so he'd grabbed her by the shoulder before she'd gotten a full two steps away. His other hand struck her throat. Pressure point, drop in blood pressure, unconsciousness. _Voil__á__._ So easy, as Hadley had been, but unlike Hadley, she didn't fill him with murderous rage. The Joker lowered her to the floor and moved behind the desk to rummage through the cabinets.

Knocking Linda out was enough to distract Jonathan from James Joyce, it seemed. "Is she all right?"

"She's fine." Medical tape. That would work.

"Good," he muttered, sticking his nose back into the book. "She's sensible."

The Joker moved Linda's wrists behind her back, winding the tape around them. "So, didya wanna come or not, Jonny?"

"Oh." The Joker got the distinct feeling that he'd forgotten the offer entirely. "No, thank you."

No Jonathan meant no being annoyed by his habit of repeating his words to himself or his pronunciation corrections. He'd be one less variable to keep under control, one less thing to slow the Joker down when the asylum sounded the alarm. But he provided so much entertainment value without even thinking about it, and the Joker needed entertainment now more than ever. It was strangely _endearing_, the way he so desperately pretended to have everything under control when he was so clearly falling apart at the seams. That sort of stubbornness was reminiscent of the Batman, in a way, and if only for that, Jonny deserved to be in a place that didn't put him in drag, girly though he may be. "You sure?"

"I'm reading."

The Joker tore the strip of tape around Linda's wrist with his teeth, and starting applying more over her mouth. "You can bring the book."

"Oh." Jonathan glanced from the novel to the Joker, now stowing Linda under the desk, pulling at one of the sets of bandages near his wrist.

"You can take off the gauze, too."

Jonathan regarded the bandages as though he'd just realized they were there. Off-the-Deep-End Jonny reminded him of Thomas Schiff, only without the talkativeness and the clinginess and the fear that the DMV was out to stop him from telling the world the great truth, whatever that was.

"And I'll get you pants."

For the first time, Jonathan's expression was something other than polite disinterest. In this case, excitement. "Can I have socks?"

"Sure, why not?"

He wasn't sure how Jonathan managed to go from cross-legged and under blankets on the cot to standing on the floor as quickly as he had without stumbling. "Which way are we going?"

The Joker decided after a moment's consideration that Jonathan would absolutely hate to have his hair ruffled, and did it anyway. "Follow me."

* * *

There were no socks in the laundry room.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. There were socks, but the only socks there currently in running through the machines' spin cycle—the laundry attendants were nowhere to be found—and longing as Jonathan seemed for a pair of socks, the Joker doubted the scarecrow would appreciate wearing a pair of soaking wet ones inside of his shoes. He had no doubt that he would get very quickly get sick of hearing complaints regarding the wet socks, and so they'd moved on without them.

"I'm not an orderly," Jonathan had said, when the Joker had handed him the uniform.

"Pretend it's Halloween," the Joker had offered, changing into a uniform that wasn't covered in Hadley-blood.

Presumably, that had worked as an excuse. That, or the wires in Scarecrow's straw had temporarily crossed the way they were meant to flow, and he'd realized that "escape" often ran with "disguise." The Joker had to guess at his motivations, because a scarecrow with a copy of _Ulysses _was a scarecrow that didn't do an awful lot of talking, as it turned out. Which was good when they were making their escape, he supposed, but could get very boring, very fast once they'd left the iron gates of Arkham Asylum.

"This isn't the way to Ruth's office."

The Joker glanced over his shoulder. Jonathan had a knack for following the leader and navigating hallways without ever looking up from his book. Then again, he had been a doctor here for years before the incarceration, so it made sense. "And?"

"You're moving away from it. She's on the other side of the hall, that way." He released the book long enough to point. The cuts along his arm were already red and irritated from absentminded scratching. Well, as long as he didn't release a large amount of blood, it'd still be less noticeable than all the bandaging.

"I'm not going to Ruthie's office, Jonny." Granted, taking his file and shredding it on the off chance she'd ever manage to piece together anything meaningful would be a plus, but there was always the risk that she'd be in her office, and he'd already injured her once today. He could always make another visit after the escape.

"Oh." He returned to the book.

Destroying records of himself was nice, but not essential. What _was _essential was transportation. True, they could hotwire a car and ram through the gates, but that would bring the police after them faster than the Joker could say "license plate number." Waiting in someone's car until the owner came along was another option, but that would mean hours of crouching in the backseat and at least one of their absences would most definitely be discovered by the time salvation came along. Threatening someone by pain of death into moving to their vehicle and passing through the gates as usual while the escapees hid in the back, though, that was both fun and instantaneous. He only needed an occupied office which, at this time of night, was easier said than done.

_No, no, no—there's one. _The faint glow of fluorescent light through clouded glass had never looked so good. "Jonny?"

"Mmm?"

"Whose office is this?"

He glanced up and wrinkled his nose. "Hugo Strange."

"And he's here at night because?"

"Because he's a condescending fool who thinks his ability to bore people unconscious gives him some great insight into humanity, and he's either deluded himself into believing that he's important and needs to be here around the clock to make sure the sun rises in the morning, or because he actually has managed some realization into his own uselessness and needs to be here because he can't stand to be home alone dwelling on his failures as a doctor and as a human being."

The Joker stared. Jonathan turned another page.

"Right. Look, I'm about to ruin his day—"

"I approve."

"Yeah, well. I'm gonna knock on the door, and grab him while he's distracted, but I need you to stand there for a second and get his attention before I get to the tackling. Can you do that?"

Jonathan's focus was back on James Joyce.

"Jonny?"

"Yes. I can be distracting." _Distracting._

"Good. See that you are." He knocked, and moved against the wall, where he'd be concealed behind the door when it opened.

And it did open, after a moment's pause. Jonathan didn't look up.

"Jo—Dr. Crane?" Interesting accent this doctor had. The Joker would have to ask where he was from at some point between the threatening with death and the car-jacking. "What are you doing here?"

"Standing. Your powers of observation aren't much better than your psychiatric insights, are they?"

And he'd thought Jonathan had been fun _before _the orderly-killing.

"I—where did you get that uniform?"

"Laundry room. As the name may have implied, they have clothes there."

The Joker was more than willing to let this banter continue for hours, but at some point, the doctor would almost certainly call an orderly or try to lead Jonathan inside his office so, regrettably, things had to be cut short. He jumped around the door, nearly knocking Jonathan backward in the process, and grabbed the doctor before he could react, wrapping one arm around his midsection and one hand over his mouth, pushing him to the floor and hauling him into the room. "Lock the door behind us, Jonny."

Jonathan did. For the first time since they'd started this excursion, his eyes were entirely off the book. His smile was small but far too amusing, and if the doctor hadn't started struggling back, Joker would have put the escape on a temporary halt just to enjoy the scarecrow's reactions. "He keeps a taser in the first drawer of his desk. If that would be advantageous."

Struggling or not, the Joker had to stop and stare at that one. "And you know this how?"

Jonathan didn't say anything.

"Wanna, uh, get out, Jonny?"

Wordless, he tossed it over. Dr. Hugo Strange, unsurprisingly, struggled much less when confronted with the possible exposure to fifty thousand volts. "I assume I need no introduction?"

His eyes were darting around the room. The Joker couldn't tell if it was from fear or an attempt to assess the situation, but either way, the taser held an inch or so from his face kept him in line. "What do you want?"

"A ride."

"You're stealing my car?" A flash of anger there. Maybe Strange was one of those midlife crisis guys who needed a car to compensate for the shortcomings of his sex life. Or maybe he just didn't appreciate being held down and threatened out of his way home.

"Harpaxophobia," muttered Jonathan.

"Stealing, no. You'll get to chauffer and everything. We just need a little transportation out of yonder parking lot." He gestured toward the window. "And you, unless you wanna experience how a bug feels in a _zap_per, are our ticket out."

Strange exhaled. His glasses had slid down his nose, now fogged by his breath, but he made no move to adjust them. Fear of becoming a human firefly was a valuable motivator. "And where are you headed after that?"

The Joker grazed his face with the taser. He didn't whimper, but he did have to bite his lips to keep from making a sound, so good enough. "Lemme ex_plain _how this is gonna work, and listen carefully, 'cause I'm only gonna cover this _once. _See, I'm the one to, uh, ask the questions, and give the orders. I tell you to head to the parking lot, and you do. I tell you to drive through while we hide in the backseat, and you do, like everything's peachy keen and per_fect_ly ordinary. I tell you where to drive, and you drive until I tell you to stop. Do all that? You get to walk away from this? Question it?" He grazed the taser over skin again. "Then this baby's gonna be just the _start_."

"How—" The taser was jabbed against Strange's face this time, and he winced, but continued. "How do I know you won't kill me?"

"You don't. But scream for help, or fight me? You'll die for sure." He took the hand without the instrument of sparky death and hauled the man up. "Check the hall. If anyone else is out there, and you get their attention?"

"I'll be electrocuted." He straightened his glasses. "So you've said."

It was cute watching people like Jonny and Batman pretend to have control of a situation. He wasn't yet sure how he felt about it from doctors with ambiguous European accents. The Joker watched in silence, keeping the taser pressed to Strange's back as he opened the door, glanced, then closed it.

"Well?"

"Dr. Arkham was there. But he went into Ruth Adam's office."

So Ruthie was still there. They needed to move quickly, then. "And the rest of it?"

"Clear."

The Joker moved around him, keeping the taser pushed against Strange's body at all times, and opened the door.

There was a woman, blonde, business-attired, and walking. She stopped, turned toward the door, and the Joker struck out before she could react, slamming her into the opposite wall. Her head hit hard, and she crumpled to the floor, a file falling from her hands.

_Clear my ass._

"You mur—" The Joker turned back, raising the taser to Strange's face, and his voice immediately dropped from a shout to just above a whisper. "You've _killed _Dr. Quinzel!"

He spared a glance at the woman. "Don't be so dramatic. She's still breathing. At most I fractured her skull."

"And that's acceptable?" Oh, righteous indignation. It never failed to amuse.

"Well, yeah. It's not like her brain's permanently scrambled or anything, and uh, even if it is, it'll make her more interesting." He shoved the taser under Strange's jaw, forcing his head back. "And be_sides_, you said the hall was empty, didn't you?"

"It was." His words were strained, either from pain or fear. Or maybe loss of oxygen. "She has the office beside me, she must have—"

"Whatever." The Joker lowered the weapon. "Move her inside."

He did, with neither the clown nor the scarecrow lifting a finger to assist.

"Check the hall again. And this time, make sure it's empty."

It was.

"Let's get this show on the road."

* * *

AN: "All Along the Watchtower" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=14qTXRkAKr8) is yet another song I was introduced to through _Watchmen. _I think about ninety percent of the music I know comes from films.

Harpaxophobia is the fear of being robbed.

"I assume I need no introduction" is a line from _Interview with a Vampire._


	39. Friends on the Other Side

AN: I've already answered this in a few review replies, but for those of you who are wondering what accent Dr. Strange has, I'm not entirely sure myself. I'll start writing while thinking "ambiguous European," which always, over the course of a chapter, slides into either the accent from the animated series or from _The Joker Blogs_, and then it's a constant struggle not to have him start shouting "How do you know these things?" while beating someone senseless.

The beginning of this chapter's second section starts with a game of D&D, in case you've never played and have no idea what's going on.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"I've got friends on the other side.

(He's got friends on the other side.)"

—"Friends on the Other Side," _The Princess and the Frog_

"I wanna listen to the radio."

The Joker had his suit back, and that was the final straw.

It shouldn't have bothered Strange. Of all the things wrong with this situation—he was a captive in his own car, held hostage by his own weapon, traveling with the two most dangerous mental patients in Arkham Asylum, because he'd just had to choose to stay late at work and the security guard at the gates just had to be too unobservant to check the backseat or notice Strange's obvious agitation—the Joker's choice of attire ought to be at the bottom of the list.

But what ought to be and what actually was were two very separate things. Strange _ought _to be in bed asleep by now, or at least in the safety of his home, as opposed to being threatened at taser-point into driving to places unknown. And at the moment, the fact that the Joker had slipped into the storage room to recover his purple suit was every bit as troubling as the threat to Strange's life. It was the principle of the thing.

Strange didn't claim to know the inner workings of the Joker's mind, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that the way he dressed—at the very least, he hadn't recovered the face paint—was a cry to be noticed. A way to draw people into looking at him, so that he could further manipulate once he had their undivided attention. It put him in control, however subtly, and in made Strange grind his teeth in frustration. "Have at it."

The Joker extended the hand that didn't have the taser, gloved fingers turning the knob. The radio flickered to life and the Joker wrinkled his nose. "NPR?"

"You're welcome to change it."

He did, as Strange glanced in the rearview mirror. Jonathan, as always, sat in the back, toying with the strap of his seatbelt as he read. He hadn't said a word since they left the parking lot. Strange was being to wonder if he was aware of his surroundings at all. In the passenger seat, the Joker paused at a pop station, considered, and ultimately switched the station right as Strange decided that he'd much rather be electrocuted then go through this experience with "Hips Don't Lie" providing the soundtrack. "Left here."

Strange steered into the appropriate lane, braking as the light went red. It was the third stoplight they'd been held at since they left Arkham, and, just as with the others, the Joker made no attempt to duck down or hide his face. True, he lacked his characteristic face paint, but was it so much to ask for some to notice the garish scars or blood in combination with the suit? At the very least, hadn't anyone noticed the taser and thought to intervene? _Damn this city. _Why did he choose to work in Gotham? Why couldn't he have gone to Metropolis? How in hell had working in the city with the country's highest crime rate seemed like a good idea?

The Joker stopped again, this time on a classics station. He sang along for a few lines and Strange noted, begrudgingly, that his voice wasn't bad when he wasn't contorting words or stammering. "School's out for the summer…school's out forever—you don't look happy, doc."

_Can't imagine why._ Mindful of the taser inches from his face, he decided that fifty thousand volts was not worth the satisfaction of giving the man a piece of his mind. "May I ask where you're going?"

"You can ask." The Joker cracked his neck, then tilted his head back. "How's the view from there, Jonny?"

"Lotus eaters," said Jonathan, without elaboration.

"I don't suppose either of you thought to take your medications with you when you decided to leave?" He glanced in the rearview mirror again, to see Jonathan raise his head with a look of mild alarm. It quickly faded, however, as soon as the neon lights of the shops outside the car caught his eye, and Jonathan busied himself with staring out the window.

"I believe in going, uh, _au naturale._ Next right."

That was a mental image he could have lived a long and fulfilling life without picturing. "You do realize that the longer Jonathan goes without—"

"Why were you still at Arkham?"

"Excuse me?" The Joker, insofar as Strange had observed, had a habit of gesticulating wildly as he spoke. In other circumstances, it wouldn't be troublesome, but in a confined space and with a taser in hand, it was electrocution waiting to happen. The sooner this car stopped, the better. _Assuming they don't kill me once they reach their destination._

"I mean, _I'm _used to Arkham, but I've been told that most people find it pret_ty_ creepy in the day, let alone at night, and _you _didn't even have the comfort of orderlies tenderly, uh, kicking you to sleep."

So not only was he being held captive by a homicidal maniac, he was being held captive by a homicidal maniac with a grudge against Arkham employees. This did not bode well. "I was writing a report."

"And you couldn't have done that from the com_fort _of your own home? What, marital problems?"

"I'm not married."

"Can't imagine why," Jonathan muttered. Strange doubted he was actually reading, given that the only light in the car came from the intermittent streetlights and neon signs outside. Which made for two mental patients focusing their attention on him, one of which had a taser while the other had hated him ever since the hypnosis sessions started. It was all he could do not to throw open the driver's door and leap out. Striking the pavement couldn't be more damaging to his health than prolonged exposure to these two.

"It was a police statement. Regarding J—Dr. Crane's case." He didn't know if maintaining a conversation would at all curry the Joker's favor, but he had to focus on something beyond all the ways he could be killed or mutilated when his use as a driver reached its end. "They wanted it as soon as possible and my office, unlike my home, has a fax machine."

"What did you write?" Jonathan was looking up now, genuinely interested in the conversation for the first time—as far as Strange could tell—since he'd knocked on the door to Strange's office and started this fiasco. It was also the first time he'd expressed anything other than animosity.

Hopefully, the response wouldn't change that. "That I didn't think you should be held responsible." _That you're so absolutely out of your mind I have no idea how you managed to focus long enough to conceive a plan to kill that orderly, let alone carried it out for weeks, _he did not add.

Jonathan returned to his book. _Crisis averted._

Strange looked back to the road, taking note of their surroundings. The car was still in the Narrows and, judging by the Joker's directions thus far, wasn't leaving any time soon, but they'd yet to enter the worst parts of the island. Here, the shops were ramshackle, just scraping by, but some effort had been made to keep them presentable, and there were no derelicts or drunks taking refuge on the stoops.

"Park."

"What?"

"Par_k_," the Joker repeated, bringing the taser much too close for comfort. "I, uh, need to make a little detour. I'm also gonna need your wallet."

"Excuse me?"

"English really isn't your first language, huh?" He held out his empty hand, fingers beckoning. "Wallet."

And to think Strange had considered the costume to be the insult to the injury. First, he'd been assaulted in his own office, then held captive in his own car—and one of his captors doubled as his _patient_—and now, he was losing his wallet so that its contents could fund God knows what. It was a horribly dangerous, potentially lethal situation, but beyond that, it was emasculating, and somehow, that managed to be worse than the risk to his life. It didn't help that the Joker took the time to smirk at the photo on his driver's license before he opened the car door, shrugging off his coat.

"They're going to recognize you with or without that." Strange could have slapped himself the second after he said it. If the Joker _was_ caught, this nightmare would be over, and if he wasn't, he didn't seem like the sort of man who would take kindly to having his oversights pointed out to him. _If he wasn't going to kill me just for being involved, he'll certainly do it for questioning him. _Killed because he couldn't stand a few blows to his own ego. Fantastic.

But if he had just signed his own death warrant, the execution had been delayed, because the Joker only smiled. "I'd think a shrink would know that people, uh, tend to remember a few key details of an event—or person—and not much else." Infuriatingly, he was right. The Joker was always seen with the green hair, face paint, and purple trench coat. The paint, dye, and coat were gone, but that didn't solve the problem of the—

"Scars." Jonathan pointed, reclining against the window in a way that the most light possible from the streetlight fell onto his book.

"So I'll keep my head down. Dunno if you've noticed, but people like avoiding eye contact in the not-so-nice parts of town."

"Where are you going?" Strange knew he wouldn't get an answer; he wasn't sure why he'd asked. Perhaps a subconscious desire to maintain some semblance of control, even if it was feigned.

But the Joker did answer, albeit not coherently. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying: and this same flower that smiles today—"

"To-morrow will be dying," Jonathan finished, closing the book. "Herrick."

"I knew there was a reason I kept you around." The Joker flipped the taser in his hand and handed it to Jonathan before Strange could fully form the thought to activate the weapon while it was pointed at the clown, let alone raise his arm and perform the action. "Watch him for me. I'll be right back." And then the door closed behind him, and the Joker was wandering across the street with no regards to traffic. Not that there were any cars to collide into him. Everyone in this city with sense was either out of the Narrows or behind locked doors by now.

Leaving Strange alone with the mental patient that hated him personally. "Do you know where he's going?"

Jonathan shook his head. The streetlight reflected off his glasses, making his eyes unreadable.

He swallowed. Reasoning with this man would be about as easy as reasoning with a housecat, but it was his only chance. "Dr. Crane, do you feel really safe traveling with the Joker? He uses the people around him to—"

"Agoraphobia." Jonathan held the taser steadier than the Joker had, which was only a small comfort, and barely that. "People tend to generalize it as a fear of open spaces or crowds, thought it actually refers to a fear of situations that can't be easily escaped. A loss of control, essentially. I prefer his company to yours."

Better to have tried and failed than never tried at all, they said. They'd never had their presence and intelligence undermined by a man so out of touch with reality that he probably couldn't tie his shoelaces without assistance. If he had shoelaces. He'd changed uniforms, but the asylum shoes stayed on his feet.

"He's going in there." Jonathan indicated with the taser, and Strange raised his head just in time to see the Joker disappear into a—

"Florist shop?" His mind couldn't begin to form in words all the questions that the sight.

"What sort of flowers do they place on graves?" Jonathan asked, and Strange didn't have to look back to know that he was receiving a pointed stare. "Lilies, isn't it?"

Strange didn't answer. Jonathan fell silent, and the minutes ticked by with only the hum of the engine and the radio informing them that "tramps like us, baby we were born to run" to pass the time. Then the Joker reemerged, showing no signs of pursuit by the shopkeepers, no frantic pace as though someone had recognized him and dialed the police, to Strange's ever-growing dismay. In one hand, the clown held a single pink rose.

"Then be not coy, but use your time," he recited, sliding back into the car. "And while ye may go marry: for having lost but once your prime, you may forever tarry."

"Very nice. May I have my wallet back?"

"No." The Joker twirled the stem in his hands, holding the flower up for inspection. "Think she'll like it?"

"She?" The only "she" Strange knew in relation to the Joker was Ruth Adams, and he doubted that she'd appreciate a rose, considering that the man had escaped, taken a hostage—two, if he counted Jonathan—and slammed an intern's head against a wall. And those were just the transgressions Strange knew about. Judging from the blood dotting the man's hands and face, there was more he wasn't aware of. If the Joker wasn't talking about Ruth—well, Strange tried to imagine the man in any sort of romance, and had to stop before the idea gave him a migraine.

"They, really. No, I think she's the only one that's mad. Guess I'll find out soon enough, huh?"

"Are we going back to Arkham?" For the second time since they'd left the gates, Jonathan looked concerned.

"If I wanted to give a shrink a flower, Jonny, I'd sneak out on the grounds and grab a tu_lip_. No offense to either of you, but I've actually got friends that _don't_ live in a loony bin." He cast an appraising look at Jonathan. "I think they'll like you."

"Oh."

"But _you_, doc, I think you'd be a third wheel." The Joker's eyes were on Strange now, and he shoved himself against the driver's door, cursing himself for fastening the seatbelt and praying that he could unfasten it and be out of the car before the Joker could lunge. "And since we really can't have ya following us and letting the boys in blue know where we've gotten to—"

His hand unfastened the seatbelt and shoved it away while the other reached behind him for the door, but the Joker's hands were faster, on him before he could get the door open, holding him on either side of the face and slamming his head against the dashboard once, twice, a third time, and then the hands were gone and his surroundings were dark.

* * *

"As you step in the tavern, you find the room to be dimly lit and, by the look of it, full of the dregs of this society. To the north, the barkeep polishes glasses. Armed men and women sit at the tables, drinking and conversing in their own groups, but keeping a wary eye on the other patrons. In the east corner, a woman in a red overcoat sits alone, shuffling a deck of cards."

"I keep my staff at the ready, but subtly." Abigail lifted her twenty-sided die from the table, shaking it in her hand. "I want to make a perception check on the woman in red."

Adrian nodded. "Anika?"

"I want to run a perception check on those glasses. I'm not ordering a drink if they're filthy." She raised her head from her character sheet to meet her twin's stare. "What?"

"We happen to be humanity's last great hope, and we don't have time to—" Abigail stiffened, grabbing the revolver from the center of the table. This time, she was the one on the receiving end of her siblings' stares.

"If it means that much to you, I can just not order a drink," Anika offered, as Abigail pushed her chair back and stood, moving away from the game of Dungeons and Dragons and toward the hall that led to the front door.

"Have all the drinks you want. You didn't hear that?" Of course she hadn't. Between going almost completely deaf last fall and still adjusting to hearing aids, Abigail couldn't fault her twin for missing the subtler sounds, such as a knock on the door. The second knock was louder, and this time, they all heard it. Abigail turned to her brother. "Expecting anyone?"

Adrian shook his head. Of course, most people who made trips to a back-alley doctor were in critical situations, so a visitor who hadn't phoned beforehand wasn't necessarily a bad sign. Still, in Gotham it paid to be cautious, and in their line of work doubly so. Abigail, being the one with the weapon, was the one to make her way to the front of apartment, and to glance through the peephole in the door.

A jagged, all-too-familiar smile met her on the other side.

She rolled her eyes as she unlocked the door, struggling to hold in a sigh as she pulled it open. "What do you want, Jackie?"

His makeup and hair dye were gone, making him look less like a homicidal lunatic with good fashion sense and more like the innocent victim of a terrible assault. With good fashion sense. If she didn't know him for the ungrateful, insensitive, occasionally murderous jerk that he was, she might have been fooled. Beside him stood a stranger in ill-fitting scrubs; presumably a nurse, as he was far too small to be an orderly. The stranger was clutching a book and examining the front walk as though it he'd never seen one before in his life. "A place to spend the night?"

Abigail tried to cross her arms, remembered the gun in her hand, and gave up. "We're running a business. And the blood on your face clearly isn't your own." All right, so Jackie was directly responsible for their quality of living, moving Adrian from the near-destitute, stereotypical back-alley doctor he'd once been to a respectable unlicensed physician with real medical supplies, all in one payment, but he was still an ass.

"C'mon, Gail. Are you really gonna let an artistic difference come between us?"

"You tried to feed my hand into my sewing machine."

He shrugged, as if it was no big deal. "You made my coat ill-fitting."

"I made it larger so that—" Abigail's eyes fell to the sleeve of the jacket and she couldn't hold in her shriek of outrage. "You _tore _it!"

"Tore what?"

"Don't play innocent with me, Jackie." She was out the door now, grabbing at his sleeve and uncaring that he was removing the gun from her hand as she did. There was a gash near his shoulder, small, but cutting completely through the fabric.

"Hey, blame the Batman." Jackie tapped a new scar, higher on his cheek. "Got me here too, see?"

"The Batman didn't promise me he'd take care of my craftsmanship!" Her hands moved away from his sleeves and shoved hard on his shoulders. He didn't even move.

"It couldn't be avoided."

She smacked at him again and he grabbed her hand, pulling it down. "You've got a lot of nerve coming down here like that—" Something was being shoved into her hand. Abigail looked down. A rose. "What's this supposed to be?"

"A statement of my deepest apologies."

"Pale pink roses represent gentleness, you jerk."

"Yeah, 'cause I'm hoping you'll be gentle. Can we come in?"

Abigail opened her mouth to tell him where he could shove his roses, when there was a high-pitched squeal from behind her. "Jackie!" Her sister shoved past her before she could protest, wrapping her hands around their very unwelcome houseguest. Easy for her to forgive him. The Joker didn't respond to Anika's cooking with violence if it wasn't up to his standards and disrespect even when it was. Well, he did, but once a cookie was gone, that was the end of it. The coat was different.

"Well, I'm glad _somebody _appreciates me."

She didn't dignify such an attention-whoring statement with as much as a glance in his direction, focusing on the nurse or orderly by his side instead. He was staring at Anika, no doubt having noticed their same facial features, heights, body structures, and brown eyes and hair—though hers reached her mid-back and Anika's was about as long as Peter Pan's—between the girls, and wondering why one twin had hearing aids when the other didn't. She considered explaining, if only to make it clear how much she was not talking to Jackie, when Anika spoke back up.

"You gave her a rose, Jackie?"

"I might have."

"I didn't get one."

"You can have mine," Abigail offered, holding it out.

Her sister pouted. "It's not the same."

"Share, kids."

"You can't share a flower," they said in unison. Jackie's friend glanced between them, a confused look on his face as though he wasn't sure which had spoken. He seemed awfully detached, and Abigail wondered if he wasn't on some sort of drug or, knowing Jackie, suffering from head trauma.

Jackie ran a hand through his hair, considering. "Uh, you want a kiss?"

Anika glanced at his teeth and wrinkled her nose. "Nope."

"Hmm…how about a scarecrow?" He brushed Anika's arms off of his midsection, offering his companion up like one of those fabulous game show prizes. Said companion barely blinked.

"That's the Scarecrow?" Abigail studied him. He did have the piercing blue eyes she remembered from the news photos, and that wasn't a common shade. And Jackie had been at Arkham Asylum—

"Hello, Scarecrow!" Anika's arms were around him now, almost knocking the twig of a man backwards just as Abigail concluded that Jackie's new friend really was the city's first costumed villain. The Scarecrow's expression at the sudden contact was far from inviting, but Abigail found herself likewise unable to resist the urge to embrace him. True, it had been the Scarecrow's toxin that had flooded their neighborhood and had resulted in a hallucinating, panicked local breaking into their apartment and beating her sister half-deaf before Abigail could knock him loose, but it had also brought in their good fortune. It was on that same night that an up and coming criminal in clown paint had been stabbed by another hallucinating, panicked local and stitched back up by her brother. Said painted criminal then gave them more money than they'd seen in the past year, from an armed robbery, he'd explained, and commissioned her services as a seamstress.

So, all in all, the fear toxin thing had been to their advantage. Without it, she'd likely have become starved and homeless before the age of twenty-three. All in all, the Scarecrow needed a hug even if it made him squirm. His eye twitched, his mouth worked, and for a moment Abigail expected him to shout, but the man only turned to his fellow Arkham escapee and asked, "Your name is Jackie?"

He shrugged, licking his lips. "It's a possibility."

"Oh." The Scarecrow looked confused as ever, but he didn't ask for elaboration. He shifted in their grasp and the twins stepped back.

"And how have my favorite amoral identical sisters been celebrating the holiday?" Jackie asked, swinging an arm over either girl's shoulder. Abigail thought of brushing him off, but gave the rose a second glance and decided against it. There was no sense in dragging on the feud, especially when there was no winning against him.

"It's not the holiday yet." Abigail was fairly certain he knew that, but considering that the last time he'd been here with an injury, he'd woken Anika up at two in the morning demanding breakfast, she was never quite sure how firm a grasp he had on the passage of time.

"Technicalities. What are you up to?"

"Dungeons and Dragons."

The trio—and the Scarecrow—turned to find Adrian in the doorway.

"You kept questing without me?" Jackie must practice pouting, to get his mouth to twist that much in spite of his scars.

"It's a different adventure."

"Oh. Okay, then."

"Jackie brought the Scarecrow." Anika grabbed said Scarecrow's wrist in spite of his efforts to step away from her, waving it back and forth for emphasis as though Adrian couldn't see him standing two feet away.

"So I've heard." He gave the Scarecrow a once-over, then stepped out of the doorway and beckoned the group in. "Would the Scarecrow prefer to wear something that isn't several sizes too large?"

Now that she saw the two of them together, her brother and the Scarecrow were about the same size.

"Do you have socks?"asked the Scarecrow.

"Multiple pairs." Adrian disappeared through the doorway to his bedroom.

"Do they match?"

"Unless you'd like me to combine separate pairs."

Abigail had never seen anyone look as elated as the Scarecrow did then.

* * *

AN: You may be wondering what "Friends on the Other Side," (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=82_ALj1KCFs) has to do with anything in this chapter. Other than the fact both contain the word "friends," and have a purple-clad villain being awesome? Not much. Way back when I was plotting chapters (right around the time I watched _The Princess and the Frog_) I realized I needed a "friend" song for this chapter, and the two became irreversibly linked in my head. People say that movie didn't have catchy songs, but I couldn't get "Friends on the Other Side" or "Ma Belle Evangeline" out of my head for weeks afterward.

Adrian the back-alley doctor, Abigail the seamstress, and Anika the other sibling that makes cookies, also showed up in my other fan fic series, with the same back story. They call him Jackie because it's my play on the usual "Jack Napier," but I don't consider it a definitive name for him, just a possibility.

"Lotus Eaters" is one of the chapter titles in _Ulysses._

"I wanna listen to the radio" is Harley's line from "Harlequinade," right before she almost crashes the Batmobile and gets yelled at by Batman: www. youtube. com/ watch?v=6IJi_Vj4_-k

NPR is National Public Radio. It tends to be a lot of news and the like. I didn't do a lot of listening to the radio in the summer of '06, but Wikipedia assures me that "Hips Don't Lie" was popular at the time. The other two songs they were listening to, in order, are Alice Cooper's "School's Out" and Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run."

The verses the Joker recites come from the poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," by Robert Herrick. It's about experiencing life while you can.


	40. There's Going to be a Flood

AN: For those who've read my other fics, remember how I used to indicate section breaks with two hyphens before I figured out how to work the horizontal line thing on the site? Well, I suppose the site must have changed its formatting again, because the other morning I discovered that all of the section breaks, from all nine of those fics, had disappeared, and I had to add new ones in, chapter by chapter. I'd meant to start on the next chapter, but that took the better part of the day, and then my morale with the site was extremely low.

Also, for readers of older fics, I noticed while looking through the previous chapters that I have the wrong links for the two fan arts by RiddlesxandxRoses, _Promises_ and _Shadow Selves: Comic Panel_, and I'm too inept with technology to find the correct links on Deviant Art, so if anyone knows them, I'd be much obliged.

Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

"So give them blood, blood, gallons of the stuff; give them all that they can drink and it will never be enough.

So give them blood, blood, blood; grab a glass because there's going to be a flood."

—"Blood," My Chemical Romance

For a man who called himself "Scarecrow," he didn't look much like one.

He sat on the edge of Adrian's bed, sliding on a pair of socks. Jackie hadn't said that he needed supervision, but between Jackie's love of chaos and the Scarecrow's mannerisms—as if he noted the world around him but couldn't be bothered to actually interact with it—Abigail didn't feel it was in his best interests to leave him alone, particularly in the room with all the medical supplies.

He was skinny enough for a name like Scarecrow, sure. And when he'd been wearing the ill-fitting orderly's uniform, she could have seen it, even if the color scheme was all wrong. But Abigail wasn't feeling it now that he was dressed in Adrian's jeans, shirt, and socks. White socks, boring and ordinary—her own feet were clad in toe socks decorated with stripes and penguins—but from how happy he'd looked upon being presented with them, they might as well have given him the One Ring.

She'd heard horror stories of Arkham Asylum for years growing up. In the Narrows, it was the closest thing to a haunted house that the kids had to scare each other with, and despite the drugs, murder, and crime all around them, stories of the madhouse never lost their edge. It was by far the oldest hospital in Gotham, and the only one whose founder had lost his mind and become imprisoned in his own institution. The legends practically wrote themselves. Over the years, she learned to sort the fact—abusive orderlies, low recovery rates—from the fiction—haunted cells, patients lobotomized into zombies and kept as slave labor—and the truth was disturbing enough. But for all the stories Abigail had heard, she'd never heard anything about an asylum policy that made sense of the Scarecrow's affinity for socks.

_Maybe they took his away. _His arms were all scraped up and they might have taken his socks if he was a suicide risk for fear that he'd suffocate himself with them. Or maybe he was just insane.

Whatever he was, he needed a more fitting costume.

"I'm Abigail."

"You don't have hearing aids." He said it as though he'd just now noticed, which, for all she knew, was the case.

"No. Anika had head trauma." Abigail wasn't sure if the Scarecrow would be pleased, saddened, or uncaring to know that he'd caused it by proxy, so she didn't mention it. "That's my sister. Anika. And my brother's Adrian." If he'd listened to the conversation on the doorstep, he knew all of that, but that was a big if.

"Oh," said the Scarecrow, straightening the toe line on the left sock.

_He wore a burlap mask, right?_ Not the most comfortable fabric, but it allowed for the passage of air, and never had there been a more fitting scarecrow material. Now, if the rest of his clothing matched that…gloves, with the fingers cut off to allow more dexterity, tattered cloth, perhaps—

"You're doctors?"

He'd noticed the otoscope resting on the nightstand, then. Abigail decided to lead him out of the room before the scalpels or scissors or other fun, bladed instruments caught his attention. "Adrian is."

"Was he the one who stitched up the—" He paused as if searching for the word, fingers tracing the sides of his mouth to mimic Jackie's scars.

"No. If Adrian had done it, it wouldn't like someone tried to sew him up with a darning needle and a shoelace." Unlicensed didn't mean unskilled, legality aside. "Do you like cookies?"

"What?" He looked at her—really r_egarded _her—for the first time.

"Anika makes them every time Jackie comes over." She extended a hand, which he didn't take. "So if there's any particular kind you want, you should go into the kitchen and tell her." Maybe he didn't like cookies. Someone that thin didn't look as if he enjoyed food at all. "She'd probably be willing to make something else, if you asked."

"I don't think I'm hungry." _Hungry. _He mouthed again after he'd said it. The man was starting to make Jackie look sane in comparison.

She took the hand that wasn't appreciating his newfound socks, and though the Scarecrow's fingers twitched, he didn't pull away. "Well, you never know. We should check."

The Scarecrow didn't look particularly open to the idea, but he allowed himself to be led.

A hat, that's what he needed. That or straw hair, though the later would shed and need frequent replacement. But something to make his ensemble more scarecrow-ish, and less "I needed a disguise and all I had was this potato sack." Maybe he'd treat her costumes with more respect than Jackie, if he could focus long enough to figure out that he was wearing one.

They found the others in the kitchen, with Adrian clearing away their gaming supplies and Anika rummaging through the cabinets for chocolate chips. Abigail left the Scarecrow with her twin, giving him another glance over her shoulder as she walked toward the table. He was too skinny to cut an imposing figure, but she was at a loss for how to counter that.

"You kept playing without me?" Jackie's expression could be annoyed, disinterested, or just tired. There was no way of knowing with him. He had Abigail's four-sided die in hand, tossing it up and down.

"It's a different quest." Adrian transferred the handbooks to the counter, where Anika was setting out mixing bowls. She was dragging the Scarecrow around by the hand. He didn't seem pleased about it. "Why, did you want to pick up where you left off?"

Jackie took another die from the table and made an unsuccessful attempt to juggle them. "Where _did _I leave off?"

"The last I remember, you'd tried to start your own adventure, and when I pointed out that the Dungeon Master was in charge of the storyline, you declared anarchy and challenged me to a duel to the death, which I declined. And while you were deriding me as a coward, my sisters' characters were conspiring to murder yours so that they could make it through the quest without laying waste to every village they encountered."

"Ah." He could juggle three dice better than two. "Maybe it's best if we keep that on, uh, hiatus. It _is _the holiday season."

"Not for another hour." Abigail had the distinct feeling that she wouldn't be getting her dice back. Good thing they had spares.

Jackie pursed his lips. It made the skin around the scar tissue pucker ever so slightly. "What, there's some law preventing you from setting off fireworks a _lit_tle early?"

"We don't have fireworks." Anika was trying to hand the Scarecrow an apron. The Scarecrow, having returned to his book, looked less than enthused about the idea.

Jackie gave her a long look, then glanced at the dice in his hand. Probably wondering if there was a way to commit murder with them. "Why no_t_?"

"They're illegal."

"Everything you people _do_ is illegal."

Anika shrugged and began measuring flour.

"Tell me you've got beer at least."

"Vodka." Abigail shifted her chair back, though she doubted he'd ask her to retrieve it. It was the only alcohol they kept in the apartment—apart from the rubbing kind—and it was only for clients who wanted it to dull the pain. Family history of alcoholism, and all that.

He looked at her as though she'd just slaughtered the Easter Bunny. "You don't drink vodka on the _Fourth_, woman. It's beer. Beer and hot dogs and lemonade and hamburgers. Have you no patriotism?"

"We've got hot dogs," said Anika, pulling a carton of eggs from the refrigerator.

"It's not the s_ame._" He pulled a wallet that may or may not have been his own from his pocket and extracted a bill, which he threw it at Adrian. "You. Get thee to the nearest convenience store and grab a six-pack."

"I don't drink."

"That's irrelevant." Jackie reclined in his seat, propping his feet on the table. "I'm not com_for_table walking the streets of Gotham after dar_k_, and our car is with our chauffeur who, at last check, was, uh, passed out in front of Zuzu's Petals, thus I'm not venturing out into the cold and uninviting wilderness. So it's either you or the twin of my choice."

Adrian slipped the bill into his pocket and stood. Abigail watched his progress until the walk to the front door took him past the counters, where the Scarecrow caught her eye again. _If there was a way of making his shoulders broader…_but scarecrows and shoulder pads didn't go hand in hand. No, scarecrows had sweaters, or flannel shirts, nailed into the wood—the _wooden frame_.

_If he could maneuver around it, it could work. _Adrian hadn't moved the character sheets from the table. She grabbed hers and flipped it over, free hand taking the pen beside it, and began to draw.

"So 'Gail. If you wanted to fix this sleeve—"

"Can't talk. Designing."

Jackie, who didn't handle being anything other than the center of attention in the most constructive way, took the pen from her hand and threw it across the room. She retrieved it and carried on sketching, while the clown amused himself with sneaking cookie batter when he thought Anika wasn't looking.

* * *

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne—"

"Wrong holiday, Jackie."

The Joker narrowed his eyes at Anika and gave a moment's consideration to throwing his can at her. No great loss; it was piss-water beer, which he supposed he'd brought upon himself by sending out someone who never drank out for alcohol. But if he threw it, he'd have to buy Anika a rose for staining their carpets, and risk sending the message that he actually _cared _about their feelings, and that wouldn't lead anywhere entertaining. He settled for flipping her off as he took another sip. The taste made the Arkham cafeteria fare seem downright palatable in comparison, but it was the first beer he'd had in months, and that kept him from tipping the contents down the drain. For now. "I'm _drink_ing. It's excusable."

"That's your first beer."

Resisting the urge to throw the can at Adrian was harder. The Joker settled for moving away from the pair on the loveseat and relocating to the couch, beside Jonathan. "Never claimed to have a high tolerance. How's the book, Jonny?"

Jonathan didn't say anything. He was half-asleep, judging by the frequency and duration of his blinks, and it appeared that all his remaining energy was focused on the pages in front of him. He'd been reading ever since he changed clothes—there was something highly amusing about seeing someone so anal in clothing as causal as blue jeans—apart from the interlude when Anika had brought out the cookies, and he'd wandered around nibbling on his while examining his surroundings. Jonathan explored rooms the same way a cat would: wandering from object to object and giving each his full attention until he was either satisfied or distracted. It had been entertaining while it lasted, but then the cookie was gone and he'd returned to _Ulysses_.

There had been novelty in the change of location and company, but that had likewise worn off. Not that he wasn't still relieved to be in a room that wasn't padded, or amused to have friends so utterly fucked up that they had no qualms in associating with the Clown Prince of Crime, but now all the little issues were starting to dig at him. He'd have to regroup his men, see which had kept out of prison and which had remained loyal. Those who hadn't—well, dealing with them would be _fun_, but he needed to amass his weapons and reorganize his motley crew and get back up to speed on the situations of the various gangs of Gotham. It wouldn't be difficult, but it would be _so _tedious.

The Joker didn't handle tedium well in the best of circumstances, and he was especially bad at it when he was pissed. Which he was.

Hadley hadn't been sorry.

The Joker had taken his time making that bastard suffer. He'd repaid every injury the orderly had inflicted on him, and on Gilda, and then some. He'd made Hadley swallow his own flesh and choke in his own blood and every other agony that had come to mind. Hadley had screamed himself hoarse while his throat still remained intact. He'd cursed and threatened and made unintelligible sounds and all the other things that were usually so much fun, but he'd never tried bargaining. And he'd never apologized for what he'd done to Gilda.

An apology wouldn't have spared him. It wouldn't have hastened his death. If anything, it would have made the Joker lash out harder. As if saying "sorry" would take back the fact that he'd murdered Gilda. It would be an unforgivable insult, and the Joker hadn't set out to extract an apology from the bastard.

But…he'd killed _Gilda._ And he didn't feel a flicker of remorse. Not that the Joker was one for remorse himself, but…it just didn't make s_ense. _How could he _not _feel it, after what he'd done?

And as such, his death provided no catharsis.

The Joker ruffled Jonathan's hair and stood.

"Need anything?" Anika asked.

He was too lost in thought to offer a sarcastic response, wandering down the hall without much thought to where he was headed. He wanted to hurt someone. No, _needed _to. Maybe multiple people. As long as it took to make this feeling go away. He'd never had anger linger like this before. Someone pissed him off and he killed them. Fast or slow, that was the end of the story, and he didn't look back. But this…this had to be inflicted on others. He didn't know how many, only that he was unsatisfied and until that changed, there would be blood.

_Wonder what Ruthie would say about that._

Ruthie. There was no way Arkham could cover this up, between the murders and the escape of the asylum's most high profile patients. _Something _would have to change, if only so that they could claim to be addressing the problem. He couldn't see why they'd fire Ruth—she hadn't been the one to strangle Gilda or beat the shit out of him at night—but she'd be affected, directly or not. Everyone would. He almost longed to be back there, if only to see how his actions would shake things up.

"Did you want another cookie?"

The Joker blinked and found himself in the kitchen. Abigail was where they'd left her: still seated at the table and still sketching. Around her sat their empty plates and glasses and, in the center of the table, the platter of chocolate chip deliciousness that he no longer had an appetite for. "Not at the moment." He sat beside her and regarded the paper.

A scarecrow.

_His _scarecrow, to be sure, but the way she'd dressed Jonny up looked unlike any description of Crane's reign of terror that the Joker had heard. He'd never seen the Scarecrow in full swing, true, but he was fairly sure that the costume had consisted of a burlap sack thrown over whatever Jonathan was wearing at the time, and not what Abigail was envisioning, which appeared to be a cross between a scarecrow and the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Scarecrow. That was the other wrench in the works.

Oh, Jonny was fun, to be sure. Anyone who was afraid of being attacked by birds was entertaining, and doubly so if said person was also capable of biting sarcasm, given the right circumstances. The Joker had no qualms with the mentally ill; they made for the best conversationalists and some of his most enthusiastic henchmen. But the madmen he employed were devoted, and would, if given the command, pick up a weapon and fire it into a bus full of nuns. Jonathan, if he even knew how to fire a gun, would stare at it blankly before returning to observing the lint of the carpet, or sunlight on the wall, or whatever else had captivated his attention. Besides, his habits of muttering to himself and forgetting the train of conversation mid-sentence would get old fast.

"You don't look happy."

How she managed to see him without looking up from the drawing, he wasn't sure. "You wanna design for Jonathan?"

Abigail looked up at that one. "Would he let me?"

The Joker shrugged. Really, it could go either way. "Wanna keep him around for a few, uh, weeks and see if he warms up the idea?"

Her eyes narrowed. For a seamstress whose hobbies included making and cuddling Joker ragdolls, she nearly came off as intimidating. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

"The thought had crossed my mind."

"And leaving your friend here?"

"He doesn't like travelling."

"Let me rephrase." Abigail straightened, tugging at the ends of her hair. "You want to leave your mentally unbalanced, potentially dangerous friend in our apartment for an indefinite amount of time, while you're off doing God knows what?"

"Pretty much."

She opened her mouth to protest and the Joker shoved a hand over it. His other hand disappeared into his coat pocket and returned with Strange's wallet. It wouldn't cover a month's rent for a new housemate, but it was more than the average Gothamite would comfortably carry on their person, particularly to a workplace in the Narrows. "I'm not saying for free, 'Gail."

He removed his hand as she lifted the stack of bills, filtering through them. "You want us to take him in for this?"

"I never said there wouldn't be more to come."

"Jack—"

"I'm offering you your own life-size Barbie here, you know. You can dress him up however you want. I doubt he'd even notice."

She shook her head, pushing her chair back. "Give me your coat."

"Eh?" The Joker gripped the cuffs of his sleeves, not quite defensively. "Dress Up the Scarecrow" wasn't about to extend to his attire. Scarecrows wore rags, after all. It would be an insult to his ensemble to put it on Jonny.

"You want the sleeve repaired, don't you?" Abigail was trying her best to look resigned, but she couldn't hide the smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "I'd rather sew it now before you can be irresponsible again and shred it completely."

He shrugged the coat off. "Blame the Batman."

"I would if he was here."

"I, uh, don't think he'd feel pro_per_ly chastised, but you're welcome to try."

* * *

"Where's the trench coat?"

Anika. Of the three, she had the least sense of self-preservation—likely as a result of having her brains scrambled when she went half-deaf—and as such was the clingiest. The Joker decided that he'd be out of here much quicker and with much less of a headache if he left by the fire escape, without mentioning it to her. "What trench coat?"

She looked away from GCN—so far, the Arkham breakout hadn't been leaked—and tilted her head. "The one you just had on."

"No idea what you're talking about." Again, he sat beside Jonathan on the couch. Jonny was making a valiant effort to carry on with the novel, though every ten seconds or so his eyes would drift shut and he have to snap himself back to attention. "Hey, Jonny."

"Ah." Not much of a response, but he could always pretend it was a "hello, Joker, how are you?"

"Is Abigail fixing the sleeve?" Anika asked.

"I never had a trench coat. Fine, Jonny, thanks for asking."

Jonathan yawned, which the Joker decided was Scarecrow code for "I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors."

"That's nice of you." He ruffled his friend's hair for the second time that evening—morning, now—and leaned in to whisper, "You'll be all right with these guys, won't you?"

"Eh?" Which, of course, was Jonathan-speak for "I'll be fine, don't worry."

"Good." He leaned back, laying his arm over the man's thin shoulders. "I'm glad you understand."

The whir of the sewing machine from the twins' bedroom stopped. There was a pause, then a sound of footsteps, and then Abigail appeared in the hall, trench coat in hand. "Here, Jackie."

"I knew you had a trench coat," said Anika, as though she'd actually doubted herself for a moment.

He took it, gave her a pat on the back, and, with a wave to Jonathan while Anika was facing the other way, started back toward Adrian's room, and the fire escape.

* * *

It was cool outside.

In Gotham City, that was nothing special. The wind in Gotham might as well be sentient, what with its ability to hunt down anyone it caught outside, knocking off hats and scarves and freezing down to the bones. But tonight, the breeze was faint, and the humidity that plagued the air during his walks through Arkham's grounds had dissipated, though there hadn't been rain to relieve it. The Joker didn't question it. He wasn't one for miracles, but standing there, feeling the wind in his hair and knowing that there wasn't a cell to return to, orderlies to drop in, or a psychiatrist trying to pry into his mind, he couldn't bring himself to put forth the effort to be cynical.

Freedom. He hadn't realized how much he missed it, even when he'd been stuck inside clawing at his own skin.

If only Gilda were here.

_No._ She wasn't, and dwelling on it didn't make her any less dead. His friend was gone and he couldn't reserve it, even after he took her murderer's life. The orderlies, though, the others that had associated with Hadley, and stopped by night after night until Jonny had killed Lotter and they'd wised up, they were still out and about. For now.

Hadley's blood was still on his face. His makeup was gone, as were his knives, and apart from lint and various dice, his pockets were empty. But he had names, and he had faces, and that would be enough.

The Joker raised his head and stared at the sky. The stars were blocked by the lights of the city.

"Maybe this time you'll consider me a threat from the start, Bats."

The next morning, the body of an orderly returning from the night-shift would be discovered in the by his wife in the garage, seated at the steering wheel with his throat slit.

On the grounds of Arkham Asylum, a dozen white roses would be found in the same spot where Dr. Ruth Adams reported seeing the corpse of the Joker's dog.

* * *

AN: The outfit Abigail's sketching is Tim Sale's Scarecrow design, as you can see on the first post of this page: everydayislikewednesday. blogspot. com/ search/ label/ scarecrow%20week (If any of the images don't show up, the right click and show picture combination should make them show up.) It's my favorite Scarecrow design.

Zuzu's Petals: Yes, I named the flower shop as an _It's a Wonderful Life _reference.

And that's the end of this fic. I am plotting a sequel, though I've got the next installment of my other series to work on in the mean time. However, I'm envisioning that as a one shot, so I should be back to this soon. I hope you enjoyed the story, and thank you all for reading and reviewing!


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